Sunday, November 30, 2008

 

Fall, Winter, Fall

A.E. Housman, Last Poems, XX:
The night is freezing fast,
      To-morrow comes December;
            And winterfalls of old
Are with me from the past;
      And chiefly I remember
            How Dick would hate the cold.

Fall, winter, fall; for he,
      Prompt hand and headpiece clever,
            Has woven a winter robe,
And made of earth and sea
      His overcoat for ever,
            And wears the turning globe.

Edward Frederick Brewtnall (1846-1902), And Dick the Shepherd Blows His Nail

The title of Brewtnall's painting is a quotation from Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost, Act V, Scene ii.

On Housman's poem see Anthony Hecht, Melodies Unheard: Essays on the Mysteries of Poetry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 98-101.



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