A. E. Housman’s ‘Level Tones’

Abstract

A. E. Housman was the favourite poet of the late Kingsley Amis,¹ who paid apt tribute in a poem:

A. E. H.

Flame the westward skies adorning Leaves no like on holt or hill; Sounds of battle joined at morning Wane and wander and are still.

Past the standards rent and muddied, Past the careless heaps of slain, Stalks a redcoat who, unbloodied, Weeps with fury, not from pain.

Wounded lads, when to renew them Death and surgeons cross the shade, Still their cries, hug darkness to them; All at last in sleep are laid.

All save one, who nightlong curses Wounds imagined more than seen, Who in level tones rehearses What the fact of wounds must mean.²