A.E. Housman Poetry Is Above Term Paper

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The "ill for mending" is his homosexuality, a factor shared by the poet, who also knows that society sees this as an ill and that it is not something that can be "repaired." The apparent admiration the poet expresses for the suicide might be seen as based on thoughts he may have himself had about suicide when he discovered his homosexuality and when that was rebuffed by his chosen target. Maude H. Hawkins writes that "Housman had been almost overwhelmingly obsessed with the desire to kill himself, but was saved from it by native courage and ambition" (164). Here, the poet writes about the process as if he had been through it and failed by drawing back, while he admires this young man who followed through:

Oh you had forethought, you could reason,

And saw your road and where it led,

And early wise and brave in season

Put the pistol to your head (5-8).

The language in this poem is the sort of simple and direct language for which Housman was noted.

Housman speculates about what later life would have been like for the cadet if he had not killed himself, and in so doing suggests what his own life has been like. He says that the cadet might later have done the same thing "After long disgrace and scorn" (10). He also hints at his own despair when he refers to the cadet as "The soul that should not have been born" (12).

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Housman also indicates that being homosexual in a society that despises the homosexual is a fate worse than death, a fate that he himself has lived. He says that the cadet has rightly seen what his future would be like and has chosen the better path:

Right you guessed the rising morrow

And scorned to tread the mire you must:

Dust's your wages, son of sorrow,

But men may come to worse than dust (13-16).

In other words, the cadet has seen "the mire" that would mark his life in the future and has decided to forego it and to take his own life.

Housman writes here about an event involving someone other than himself, but he draws on his own experience as he shows why this story attracted his attention and how he reacts top it because he has been in a similar position. His own understanding colors his reaction and also make the poem more powerful.

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