in my feelings abt a. e. housman again, this time in re: his relationship with religion
i think the most famous expression of it is prob last poems 12, which is tbh one of the a.e.h. poems i like better* and includes this bit:
And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made. They will be master, right or wrong; Though both are foolish, both are strong…
("I, a stranger and afraid/In a world I never made" is one of my fav turns of phrase in a.e.h.)
but imo the really interesting take is in "the carpenter's son" (a shropshire lad 47) (which is like. honestly kind of not that good, poetically speaking), where he's doing a bunch of really cool stuff with the story of the crucifixion, esp. in this stanza:
"Here hang I, and right and left Two poor fellows hang for theft: All the same's the luck we prove, Though the midmost hangs for love."
the poem is not a straight retelling of the passion, though: note that the speaker is hanged, not crucified (elsewhere, he mentions a hangman and also clearly specifies that he's hanging on the gallows, not a cross). so the speaker is not christ; the speaker is simply christ-like, in a deeply unsubtle way. the christ-like-ness is so blatant and in-your-face that as far as i can tell, people seem to be ignoring the fact that the speaker cannot be jesus himself.
so if the speaker is not the incarnation of god come down to earth specifically to die for the redemption of humanity, then what's the crime that would have you hanged for love? well, arguably a few depending on the circumstances, but there is one in particular that is especially obvious and also contextually relevant when you take into account the fact that asl is a poetry collection written by a gay englishman mostly in the year of the oscar wilde obscenity trial, and esp when you pair "the carpenter's son" (again, asl 47) with asl 45, which was inspired by reporting on the suicide of a young man who had realized he was gay in aug. 1895—second stanza** here:
And if your hand or foot offend you, Cut it off, lad, and be whole; But play the man, stand up and end you, When your sickness is your soul.
when you read "the carpenter's son" in this context and, like, paying some basic level of attention, it's clear that a.e.h. is playing the idea of christ dying for love of the world off the idea that queer people should die for their own loves. (sex between men was a capital crime, at least in theory, in england until 1861, with the last actual execution taking place in 1835; a.e.h. was born in 1859.) like, "if executing someone for the sake of love is bad, and we seem to be agreed on that point, then perhaps we should not be executing people for the sake of love?"
and i am fascinated by the fact that people don't seem to care that much about this poem. so much ink has been spilled on a.e.h.'s queerness (most of it bad tbh) but we're just going to ignore this bit?
