THE FASHION OF THE EARTH

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.

 

 

 

'Diffugere Nives...'A.E. Housmancherry treesDora PymHorace's OdesTrinity College Cambridge