To my Comrade, Moses J. Jackson, Scoffer at this Scholarship

A. E. Housman

As we went walking far and wide

Through silent fields and countryside,

We watched together star signs brim

And rise above the ocean’s rim,

And planets too, that fret with light

The icy caverns of the Night.

These constellations we now mark,

When we were not, in formless dark,

A poet, centuries before,

Would watch from the Italian shore

Drop in the sea, and mindful Earth

Had made him mortal from his birth,

He set on high his music’s bars

Among the everlasting stars,

To those to come, clear warning sign

To place no faith in the divine;

For sacred to the pole unfurled

Above, and compassing the world,

These songs yet suffered sad disgrace

And almost sank without a trace:

Though to our strand this wreckage came,

It scarcely owned its author’s name.

Mine not to exhort the gods

Or stars that vex our mortal odds,

But love of virtue quick to fade

Makes me seek fame with human aid.

A man, I chose a man to stand

At this front page and my right hand—

Who thrive or perish in my pages,

Brief friend, your name should last the ages.

I send these lines to you who went

Where stars rise in the Orient,

From here where constellations sink

Below the ocean’s western brink.

Take them: for that day will come

To add us to the canceled sum

And give our bones to earth to rot

(For we have no immortal lot,

And souls that will not last forever)

And the chain of comrades sever.