Cyril Connolly on A. E. Housman

“There are two themes in Housman, man's mortality, which intensifies for him the beauty of nature, and man's rebellion against his lot. On his treatment of these themes his reputation for classicism subsists. But his presentation of both is hopelessly romantic and sentimental, the sentiment of his poems in fact is that of Omar Khayyam, which perhaps accounts for their popularity; he takes over the pagan concept of death and oblivion as the natural end of life and even as a not inappropriate end of youth, and lards it with a purely Christian self-pity, and a romantic indulgence in the pathetic fallacy.”

“The fate which Housman's poems deserve, of course, is to be set to music by English composers and sung by English singers, and it has already overtaken them. He will live as long as the B.B.C. does.”