In a letter published in The Times in May
1936 – the month after
A.E. Housman died – a former student,
Dora Pym, herself a classics teacher,
described a lecture the poet/professor
had given in 1914, one morning
in May when all of the cherry trees
of Trinity College, Cambridge seemed to bloom.
The subject was one of Horace’s Odes –
‘Diffugere nives…’ Housman analysed
the poem, both its sense and grammar,
with his usual erudition, wit,
and donnish sarcasm. Then, for the first time
in the two years she had been attending
his lectures, looked up at the students.
In a quite different voice, he told them
that he would like to spend the remaining
minutes of the lecture ‘considering
this ode simply as poetry’ – something
they would have previously assumed was
anathema to him. He read the piece
first in Latin, then in his own translation –
‘The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
And altered is the fashion of the earth…’
– obviously moved. ‘That,’ he said hastily
like one betraying a secret, ‘I regard
as the most beautiful poem in ancient
literature’, and hurriedly left the room.
While they were walking to the next lecture,
her companion, a scholar from Trinity
(who would be killed in the coming war)
said, ‘I was afraid the old fellow was going
to cry’. They thought they had seen something
not meant for them, or anyone perhaps.
By David Selzer