When I watch the living meet

When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street
Where I lodge a little while,

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,
Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;
There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.

A. E. Housman


Read A Shropshire Lad again recently, and was struck by this poem that I had never noticed before. No poet is more constantly aware of death than Housman, which of course makes him acutely aware of life.

I love "In the nation that is not."