15 September 2008

Mellifluous Mondays: Brooks Too Broad

Some friends drift away in the natural course of things, and others make choices which lead them down a new and solitary path. Sometimes the bond between you is stretched by time or circumstance, then recovers; sometimes it is decisively severed. And then there's nothing you can do.

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
-A.E. Housman


This is poem 54 in Housman's collection "A Shropshire Lad," published in 1896.

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