September 15, 2003

  • “Terrence, This Is Stupid Stuff…”


     


                “Terrence, this is stupid stuff:                            Therefore, since the world has still


    You eat your victuals fast enough;                 Much good, but much less good than ill,


    There can’t be much amiss, ‘tis clear,            And while the sun and moon endure


    To see the rate you drink your beer.                Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,


    Bu oh, good Lord, the verse you make,          I’d face it as a wise man would,


    It gives a chap the belly-ache.                       And train for ill and not for good.


    The cow, the old cow, she is dead;                ‘Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale


    It sleeps well, the horned head:                      Is not so brisk a brew as ale:


    We poor lads, ‘tis our turn now                      Out of a stem that scored the hand


    To hear such tunes as killed the cow.             I wrung it in a weary land.


    Pretty friendship ‘tis to rhyme                          But take it: if the smack is sour,


    Your friends to death before their time           The better for the embittered hour;


    Moping melancholy mad:                              It should do good to heart and head


    Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.”           When your soul is in my soul’s stead;


                                                                            And I will friend you, if I may


                                                                            In the dark and cloudy day.


               


    Why, if ‘tis dancing you would be,                 There was a king reigned in the East:


    There’s brisker pipes than poetry.                    There, when kings will sit to feast,


    Say, for what were hop-yards meant,             They get their full before they think


    Or why was Burton built on Trent?                  With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.


    Oh many a peer of England brews                 He gathered all that springs to birth


    Livelier liquor than the Muse,                           From the many-venomed earth;        


    And malt does more than Milton can             First a little, thence to more,


    To justify God’s ways to man.                          He sampled all her killing store;


    Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink                      And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,


    For fellows whom it hurts to think:                   Sate the king when healths went round.


    Look into the pewter pot                                 They put arsenic in his meat


    To see the world as the world’s not                 And stared aghast to watch him eat;


    And faith, ‘tis pleasant till ‘tis past:                  They poured strychnine in his cup


    The mischief is that ‘twill not last.                    And shook to see him drink it up:


    Oh I have been to Ludlow fair                         They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:


    And left my necktie God knows where,           Them it was their poison hurt.


    And carried halfway home, or near,                -I tell the tale that I heard told.


    Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:                     Mithridates, he died old.


    Then the world seemed none so bad,


    And I myself a sterling lad;


    And down in lovely much I’ve lain,


    Happy till I woke again.


    Then I saw the morning sky:


    Heigho, the tale was all a lie;


    The world, it was the old world yet,


    I was I, my things were wet,


    And nothing now remained to do


    But begin the game anew.


     


     


    -A.E. Housman

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