Another Night, Another Day

'Another night, another day', to echo Housman; the blind drawn down to shut out the moon, the curtains pulled to let in the sun; and still Housman's mind is consumed with thoughts of death, the grave; and so mine too thinks on dying: those who want to live die young; those who want to die live long, suffer the infirmities of age. 'What man is he that yearneth for length unmeasured of days?' Not he, Housman; not I, a woman. And yet Housman for all his sad verse and doomed love lived into his seventies; made into poems sorrow's sum; gave to his readers unhappy reading, a melancholy feeling; that Death was close, was Life's companion.

Picture credit: Alfred Edward Housman, photo by E. O. Hoppe, 1910 (source: Wikipedia).

From journal, April 2022

See A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems by A. E. Housman (Penguin Classics).