Bring, In This Timeless Grave To Throw poem – A. E. Housman

XLVI

Bring, in this timeless grave to throw

No cypress, sombre on the snow;

Snap not from the bitter yew

His leaves that live December through;

Break no rosemary, bright with rime

And sparkling to the cruel crime;

Nor plod the winter land to look

For willows in the icy brook

To cast them leafless round him: bring

To spray that ever buds in spring.

But if the Christmas field has kept

Awns the last gleaner overstept,

Or shrivelled flax, whose flower is blue

A single season, never two;

Or if one haulm whose year is o’er

Shivers on the upland frore,

–Oh, bring from hill and stream and plain

Whatever will not flower again,

To give him comfort: he and those

Shall bide eternal bedfellows

Where low upon the couch he lies

Whence he never shall arise.

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Alfred Edward Houseman

Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) was an English classical scholar and poet. His cycle of poems, A Shropshire Lad, wistfully evokes the constraints and limited choices of youth in the English countryside. The simplicity and distinctive imagery of the writing appealed strongly to Edwardian taste, and to many early 20th-century English composers, both before and after the First World War

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