SOURCE: Rosebury, Brian. “The Three Disciplines of A. E. Housman's Poetry.” Victorian Poetry 21, no. 3 (autumn 1983): 217-28.

In the following essay, Rosebury describes Housman as a poet of “heartfelt emotion” whose poetry is best when his craftsmanship is suited to its expression. He observes that Housman's poetry is most successful when he avoids argumentation or metaphysical content and instead maintains a consistently serious tone, with visual imagery suited to the mood of the poem.

The last five years have seen the publication of two important books about A. E. Housman: a thorough and sympathetic biography by Richard Perceval Graves¹ and a resourceful defense of the poet's “theory and practice” by B. J. Leggett.² It is too early to predict whether Housman's reputation and claim on academic attention will grow, as Hardy's and to a lesser extent Kipling's have done in recent years. As Leggett observes in his Introduction, individual...