N.B. I'm coming out of commenting retirement for this!

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And, yet, according to his own mother and brother, he hated Bush, thought the Iraq war as illegal, and was planning on meeting Noam Chomsky. Something for everybody!

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I only remember a few bits of Housman:

That is land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot go again.

And on a less poignant key:

Malt does more than Milton can

To justify God's ways to man.

I've forgotten the poems, and I've probably misquoted something or other.

The fight over and use of soldiers' corpses is indecent isn't it?

I hadn't heard about his views or a meeting with Chomsky, but why should anyone be surprised that a soldier can think for himself?

One last bit: Housman was an expert on the text of one Sextus Propertius.

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My understanding is that he was preparing a volume on your namesake, but, as it was incomplete when he was on his deathbed, he ordered it to be destroyed. As I am sure you know, there are lots of notes he made on the editing of Propertius, some of which survive in various journals and in Collected Poems and Selected Prose (Penguin, link). Instead, he left us with his indispensible Manilius (sigh), which can be downloaded as a tidy PDF from Google books (link). Generations of Latin-reading historians of astronomy are grateful to Housman, and to Google, but the lovers among us would have preferred Propertius.

Incidentally, much in his missives to other scholars amounts to snark avant la lettre.

I think Tillman must have been an true American maverick (as opposed to an annoying talking head or an arthritic has-been). Everything I read about suggests that he was an independent thinker and a force to be reckoned with in the classroom, on the football field, and on the Fields of Mars. I can only imagine how he must have been received in Elysium.

VI

 

Ask me no more, for fear I should reply;

  Others have held their tongues, and so can I;

Hundreds have died, and told no tale before:

  Ask me no more, for fear I should reply --

 

How one was true and one was clean of stain

  And one was braver than the heavens are high,

And one was fond of me: and all are slain.

  Ask me no more, for fear I should reply.

 

VIII

 

Now to her lap the incestuous earth

  The son she bore has ta'en.

And other sons she brings to birth

  But not my friend again.

 

XX

 

I shall not die for you,

  Another fellow may;

Good lads are left and true

  Though one departs away.

  But he departs to-day

And leaves his work to do,

  For I was luckless aye,

And shall not die for you.

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As far as snark, I'm not too surprised. Classicists tend to be a catty lot.

Thanks for casting a lovely Housmanian melancholy over the day. Nos puluis et umbra sumus.

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/USMA '76

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