PTMGMC: Richard Dawkins reads A.E. Housman

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins reads 'Last Poems: XL' by A.E. Housman, and tells us why it always brings him to tears.

[poguemahone]

Beautiful poem read by a beautiful man with a beautiful mind. What more could one want?

[Laserwad]

When he talks about "indifferent callousness in nature"... I immediately think of Omar Khayyam. His poems dwell upon the same subject and are tinged with a deep melancholy. It is interesting to note that the first translation of Khayyam's quatrains came out in the same year as "On the Origin of Species" by Darwin. He lived in the 11th century, yet his ideas were only appreciated in great numbers in the 19th century! Khayyam was a true "natural philosopher", in my view. And he excelled both in the world of truth (science) and in the world of beauty (art).

[mojosbigsticks]

I did not lose my heart in summer's even,
  When roses to the moonrise burst apart:
When plumes were under heel and lead was flying,
  In blood and smoke and flame I lost my heart.

I lost it to a soldier and a foeman,
  A chap that did not kill me, but he tried;
That took the sabre straight, and took it striking
  And laughed and kissed his hand to me and died.

[carlinraton]

Alfred Edward Housman aka A. E. Housman (1859-1936), was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems wistfully evoke the dooms & disappointments of youth in the English countryside. Their beauty, simplicity & distinctive imagery appealed strongly to late Victorian & Edwardian taste, and to many early 20th-century English composers both before & after WW1. Through their song-settings, the poems became closely associated with that era, with Shropshire itself.

Housman was one of the foremost classicists of his age & has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars who ever lived. He established his reputation publishing as a private scholar &, on the strength and quality of his work, was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London & then at Cambridge. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius & Lucan are still considered authoritative.

[source: Wiki]

[stevenikfar]

Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
What tune the enchantress plays
In aftermaths of soft September
Or under blanching mays,
For she and I were long acquainted
And I knew all her ways.

On russet floors, by waters idle,
The pine lets fall its cone;
The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing
In leafy dells alone;
And traveller’s joy beguiles in autumn
Hearts that have lost their own.

On acres of the seeded grasses
The changing burnish heaves;
Or marshalled under moons of harvest
Stand still all night the sheaves;
Or beeches strip in storms for winter
And stain the wind with leaves.

Possess, as I possessed a season,
The countries I resign,
Where over elmy plains the highway
Would mount the hills and shine,
And full of shade the pillared forest
Would murmur and be mine.

For nature, heartless, witless nature,
Will neither care nor know
What stranger’s feet may find the meadow
And trespass there and go,
Nor ask amid the dews of morning
If they are mine or no.

[JosefPuhr]

What is wrong with being an atheist ?

[flashgordon]

A knighton lad here...stick to your day job mate!

[dantejager]

Oh for fucks sake, is Dawkins reading this just because Housman was an atheist?