Monday, December 7, 2015

"Look not in my eyes, for fear" by A. E. Housman

Lyric 15 from A Shropshire Lad (1896)
by A. E. Housman

Look not in my eyes, for fear
   They mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
   And love it and be lost like me.
One the long nights through must lie
   Spent in star-defeated sighs,
But why should you as well as I
   Perish? -- gaze not in my eyes.

A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,
   One that many loved in vain,
Looked into a forest well
   And never looked away again.
There, when the turf in springtime flowers,
   With downward eye and gazes sad,
Stands amid the glancing showers
   A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.


A. E. Housman (1859-1956)
English classical scholar and poet
(Photographed by E. O. Hoppe)

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