However, unconditional love can never be suppressed or vanquished, and Housman knows that, if Jackson changed his mind, he would be by his side in an instant.Ħ. Housman (1859-1936) wrote very powerfully about lost and hopeless love, and this poem is a fine example of how he transmuted personal unhappiness (he fell in love with Moses Jackson, a fellow student at Oxford, as an undergraduate) into great poetry.Īs the second stanza of the longer poem above suggests, Housman loved Jackson but agreed to ‘forget’ him at Jackson’s request.
Housman, ‘ Shake Hands, We Shall Never Be Friends, All’s Over’.Īnd the soul that was born to die for you,Īlong with the love of a parent for their child, is there any deeper unconditional love than the love we harbour for one who will never return it?Ī. Here we have an unconditional love that borders on being akin to the love a believer has for God.ĥ. The poem fuses devotional verse with the language of love poetry to produce something the Victorians took to their hearts, which has remained a mainstream favourite among anthologists and fans of classic love poetry.
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