Our April meeting saw the return of popular speaker Gabriel Woolf, this time with a talk on the life and work of the poet A E Housman. As usual Gabriel gave more of a performance than a talk, reading several of the poems in between giving a an outline of the poet’s life.
He took the title of his talk from the last line of one of the poems in a volume called ‘Last Poems’ which begins ‘The chestnut casts his flambeaux…’
Housman was not born in Shropshire as is popularly believed (because of his poem cycle ‘A Shropshire Lad’), but in Worcesershire. He attended Oxford University which, as he is quoted as saying, ‘did not have much effect on me.’
He studied the classics and went on to become a Professor of Latin, gaining renown for his editions of the Roman classic writers. But it is for his poetry that he is now remembered and, as Gabriel read from the verses, the audience was able to appreciate Housman’s unique way with words.