A Shropshire Lad XXX: Others, I am not the first

Housman, A. E. (1859 - 1936)

Original Text

A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co., 1896): 45-45. del H68 S551896 Fisher Rare Book Library

1Others, I am not the first,

2Have willed more mischief than they durst:

3If in the breathless night I too

4Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.

5More than I, if truth were told,

6Have stood and sweated hot and cold,

7And through their reins in ice and fire

8Fear contended with desire.

9Agued once like me were they,

10But I like them shall win my way

11Lastly to the bed of mould

12Where there's neither heat nor cold.

13But from my grave across my brow

14Plays no wind of healing now,

15And fire and ice within me fight

16Beneath the suffocating night.

Publication Start Year

1896

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

RPO 1996-2000.

Rhyme