I love this poem. The first time I read it, it made me weep. It has one of my favorite lines of poetry --

I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

A fire in my head -- wow!

Now, as for the aengus. You are right on with mythological figure. Have a look at what I pasted in from Wikipedia:


In Irish mythology, Óengus (Old Irish), Áengus (Middle Irish), Aengus or Aonghus (Modern Irish) is a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann and probably a god of love, youth and poetic inspiration. He was said to have four birds symbolizing kisses flying about his head (whence, it is believed, the xxxx's symbolizing kisses at the end of lovers' letters come from)

I hadn't heard of Hemans, but looked her up and read a couple of poems. Is she in the spirtiual/religious mode like Thompson? What interests you about her?

For "Hound," maybe "intense" is a charitable word. The poem does have some striking phrases and raw power here and there, but I found it all but unreadable. He was pretty bold to try to rhyme "swift importings" and "sea snortings"! Highly regarded in its day, though, and for a good while after. Wikipedia lists a bunch of contemporary references to "Hound," among them:

Thompson's poem is also the source of the phrase, "with all deliberate speed," used by the Supreme Court in Brown II, the remedy phase of the famous decision on school desegregation.[1]

The Christian alternative rock band Daniel Amos wrote a song titled Hound of Heaven on their 1978 album Horrendous Disc that is based on the Thompson poem.[2]

Christian artist Michael Card wrote a song "Hound of Heaven" basing the lyrics on parts of Thompson's poem.

The Substructure, a Christian underground band, wrote a song "Running Time" (released on the KUDZU Musicians' Sampler 1997) loosely based on Thompson's poem.

Monty Python's famous skit, "The Cat of Heaven" was writtten after Graham Chapman read the poem one afternoon while sitting on the toilet.

496.

On Wenlock Edge

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

A. E. Housman, 1859-1936

Now that there have been 5 (I think) poems posted of the 500, I find myself wondering why each of these poems have made it into anthologies so often. The one that stands out to me and most belongs of the 5, is Song of the Wondering Aengus. The others I am not so sure about; to me they have more historical value than enduring poetic value. I am still thinking about the A. E. Housman poem. With a storm bearing down on the Mid-Atlantic as I type, the poem is apropos.

What catches in my mind is the idea of the wood in trouble and the image Housman creates of the wind bending the trees. The word plies almost seems to me to be a double entendre.

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

Re: Felicia Hemans--she was one of a small group of Women Romantic Writers that have rather recently made it into poetic canon. She had a very interesting life (preacher's family--okay, sounds a bit dull but wasn't). I can't acutally say I "like" her but I do find her interesting, especially in the light of the "male" Romantic poets. What I do find fascinationg, however, is the fact that Hemans and her female contemporaries were intentionally left out of any canon for the simple fact that they were women and as such, could obviously not have written anything worthwhile. It seems canon are rather established, once you're in, you're in--referring to S.'s question-- and poets that had been omitted for so long (ie, women,as in the Women Romantic Writers) are sometimes simply forgotten. This almost happend to Hemans and certainly would have if it weren't for a young woman doing research on women and poems during the Romantic period.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/ ... raphy.html

That is of course an interesting can of worms you've opened, oblivion. What we have with this 500 top poems approach is an objective method of arriving at a list, but objective only in the sense that it doesn't rely on any one individual's valuation of the best poems of the past and present. The method itself is fraught with the selection bias an anthologizer would bring to the task. William Harmon doesn't raise this issue in his introduction, but it stares you in the face when he lists the 11 poets represented by 10 or more poems and one is a woman (Dickinson). Of the 140 poets included, by my count there were 12 women in total.

That is true what you say about historical interest. For me that's part of what we can see through the keyhole--the type of poetry the era valued (or at least what Mr. Anthologizer valued). That doesn't make the poem any better for us, though. But it's interesting to think about how we become so accustomed to a particular register in poetry. We accept the conversational, intimate, and plain as the voice of poetry, while for our forebears, poets to be worth their salt had to levitate themselves above the prosaic.

We read "A Shropshire Lad," the volume that contains "On Wenlock Edge," in this forum a while back. It might have been a strange choice, based on the fact that I like its stoical, gloomy fatalism, and we had Penelope the lively British lady along for the ride at the time. Anyway, most of the critics agree that Housman is a prominent minor poet. His critical reputation lags far behind his popularity. "ASL" eventually became one of the best selling books of English verse of all time. And guess what? Coming in at no. 495 is another one from this poet.

Into my heart an air that kills..."
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Maybe I'm too tired to think or maybe I'm just dense, but what is the "air that kills"??? The past? Regret?

I love it too. I like poems that seem not to bear any personal marks of authorship, as if they come from a people, not a person, the way ballads often strike us. This poem is very different in that regard from the later Yeats, when it was all about himself.

I like "apple blossom in her hair," a quantity or even just a quality, instead of "apple blossoms." What does the glimmering girl represent to you? To me she is both sensuality and intellect, that rare combination the quest for which puts the fire in the speaker's head. The silver apples of the moon, and the golden ones of the sun, seem to be opposite kinds of experience, the ecstatic and the contemplative, but each one enjoyed equally.

I take it as regret that he's had to leave his native land. The air he recollects "kills" in the sense that not being able to breathe it deprives him so extremely. Maybe?

Me too. I hadn't thought about it until you brought it to my attention.

The girls is poetry or the poet's muse. The seeking or yearning for the glimmering girl is the never ending pursuit of a poem or inspiration.

Which is which? Sun ecstatic? Moon contemplative?

I'll put in my 2 cents worth to 495 (and I think the number fits the poem more than any words). I'm afraid I didn't like it at all. It appears rather trite and cliché, as if a high school student were told to write a poem on the subject and had 15 minutes in which to do so.

One opinion I came across is that Housman's sensibility is essentially adolescent, that he never progresses beyond that in his poetry. That would sort of go along with your appraisal. However there's nothing very wrong with thoroughly expressing the adolescent. I suppose, in terms of my own likings, Housman appeals to me in the compactness and compression of his lines, the simplicity of his forms, and, as I said, his characteristic mood of fatalism--though he's also sentimental, and I like that, too, if it's not ovderdone. I might also be a bit of an antiquarian when it comes to my taste in poetry.

"Into my heart, an air that kills," comes from a section in "ASL" in which the theme is exile from the native country. I think the poem, as slight as it is, works better within the context of those other poems.

Have you read LXII, "Terence this is stupid stuff"? That's one of my favorites. I also like (among many others) XLIII, also called "The Immortal Part." Like Housman's poems or hate them, it still might be nice to have lived in an era when a book of poems could be a best -seller.

Touché!

Not that we need a pep talk, but it might help to remember that we're dealing right now with also-rans, the stars the academy didn't think much of, the kids picked last in gym class, the least likely to succeed. Oblivion had a good spin on the matter when she put down the last contestant as "495, which says it all." As we go down scale or ladder or whatever, we should see a big improvement in the quality of our reading.

Which isn't to prejudice anyone against "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," by Oscar Wilde. It's long, though, so I'll post just the first three of the six parts. I've also doubled up on the line lengths because for me it reads faster that way.

494. The Ballad of Reading Gaol

2 He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead, The poor dead woman whom he loved, And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men In a suit of shabby gray;
A cricket cap was on his head, And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain, Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low, “That fellow’s got to swing.”

Dear Christ! the very prison walls Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain, My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what haunted thought Quickened his step,
and why he looked upon the garish day With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved, And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust, Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long, Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck, Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor Into an empty space.

He does not sit with silent men Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep, And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white, The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black, With the yellow face of Doom.

3
He does not rise in piteous haste To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not feel that sickening thirst That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves Comes through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs, That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the anguish of his soul Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air Through a little roof of glass:
He does not pray with lips of clay For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek The kiss of Caiaphas.

II Six weeks the guardsman walked the yard, In the suit of shabby gray:
His cricket cap was on his head, And his step was light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky, And at every
wandering cloud that trailed Its ravelled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun, And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep, Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain, Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze The man who had to swing.

For strange it was to see him pass With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he Had such a debt to pay.

The oak and elm have pleasant leaves That in the spring-time shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree, With its alder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is the seat of grace For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer’s collar take His last look at the sky?

It looks like you posted only 2 & 3 or is the 2 out of place because you doubled up? Will you post the rest or do I need to go look for myself?

Thoughts on #494. The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The rhyme scheme seems a bit pedestrian to me. Ah, wait, I've got it, it just occurs to me why the rhyme scheme impacts my impressions of the poem as somehow less. I associate a simple rhyme scheme with poetry for children and school assignments. Don't get me wrong, I do like rhyme, very much actually. In this poem however, for the modern reader I think the simplicity of the rhyme does detract. I find myself liking this poem and wanting to know the end of the story. I am intrigued by the idea Wilde puts forth; of killing what we love.