The Poetry of A. E. Housman Essay -- essays research papers

The Poetry of A. E. HousmanHousman was natural in Burton-On-Trent, England, in 1865, just as the US Civil war was ending. As a young child, he was disturbed by the word of honor of slaughter from the former British colonies, and was affected deeply. This turned him into a brooding, invaginate teenager and a misanthropic, pessimistic adult. This outlook on life shows intelligibly in his poetry. Housman believed that people were generally evil, and that life conspired against mankind. This is evident not provided in his poetry, but also in his short stories. For example, his story, The Child of Lancashire, make in 1893 in The London Gazette, is about an child who travels to London, where his parents die, and he becomes a street urchin. There are veiled implications that the child is a tribadistic (as was Housman, most probably), and he becomes mixed up with a conclave of alike youths, attacking affluent pedestrians and stealing their watches and gold coins. Eventually he leav es the gang and becomes wealthy, but is attacked by the same gang (who dont recognize him) and is thrown turned London Bridge into the Thames, which is unfortunately frozen over, and is killed on the hard wish-wash below. Housmans poetry is similarly pessimistic. In fully half the poems the speaker is dead. In others, he is about to die or wants to die, or his girlfriend is dead. expiry is a really important stage of life to Housman without death, Housman would probably not have been able to be a poet. (Housman, himself, died ...