Stolen Waters

I fell in love with Housman’s poems when I was fourteen. The musical quality of his verses delighted me – still does – and his tone of settled melancholy chimed soothingly with my teenage desperation.

Later in my teens, as I secretly explored such homosexual texts as I could get hold of (there weren’t many available in 1960s Harrow) I read Housman keenly for the subtext.

Ho, everyone that thirsteth
And hath the price to give,
Come to the stolen waters,
Drink and your soul shall live.

Come to the stolen waters,
And leap the guarded pale,
And pull the flower in season
Before desire shall fail.

It shall not last for ever,
No more than earth and skies;
But he that drinks in season
Shall live before he dies.

June suns, you cannot store them
To warm the winter’s cold,
The lad that hopes for heaven
Shall fill his mouth with mould.

A. E. Housman (1859–1936)


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