AE Housman

My last exam is on Thursday the 3rd; I should be revising, but the urge to write grows stronger within me. Good timing methinks, as my next long-haul business trip won't be until October.

This evening my gaze fell onto a second-hand copy of AE Housman's 'More Poems' from 1936. I purchased it in Brighton back in late 2004/early 2005. It contains an inscription to 'Jimmy' from 'John', dated June 1956.

John drew Jim's attention to this poem. But at the end of the book, John had written another Housman poem:


'He would not stay for me, and who can wonder'

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder,
And went with half my life about my ways.


I have always been fascinated by the journey a book can take (something that first struck me when reading Gabo's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'). But the fact that I found this book in a distressed state, with the memory of Jimmy and John writ large between its covers, makes me very sad.