The sea is a subject by no means exhausted. I have somewhere a poem which directs attention to one of its most striking characteristics, which hardly any of the poems seem to have observed. They call it salt and blue and deep and dark and so on; but they never make such profoundly true reflexions as the following:

O billows bounding far,
How we, how wet ye are!

When first my gaze ye met
I said, ‘Those waves are wet’,

I said it, and am quite
Convinced that I was right.

Who saith that ye are dry?
I give that man the lie.

Thy wetness, O thou sea,
I wonderful to me.

It agitates my heart,
To think how wet thou art.

No object I have met
Is more profoundly wet.

Methinks, ’twere vain to try,
O sea, to wipe thee dry.

I therefore will refrain,
Farewell, thou humid main.

A. E. Housman, writing to his brother, Laurence. Reading Letters From A. E. Housman For Fun

A. E. Housman’s “1887″ Laments The Deaths Of Those Who Actually Save The Queen

Moses Jackson was an athletic, heterosexual Oxford classmate who was A.E. Housman’s unrequited, lifelong love.

Jackson inspired many of Housman’s poems, got Housman his job in the Patent Office where Jackson himself worked, and maintained a relationship with the poet after marrying and moving to Canada. Jackson’s impending death was the motivation for Housman’s publication of “Last Poems.”  An account of the impact of Housman’s love for Jackson on Housman’s life and poetry  can be found at GLBTQ-Literature-Housman.

He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder
And went with half my life about my ways.
– from Additional Poems, VII

Oh would you know why Henry sleeps,
And why his mourning Mother weeps,
And why his weeping Mother mourns?
He was unkind to unicorns.

No unicorn, with Henry’s leave,
Could dance upon the lawn at eve,
Or gore the gardener’s boy in spring
Or do the very slightest thing.

No unicorn could safely roar,
And dash its nose against the door,
Nor sit in peace upon the mat
To eat the dog, or drink the cat.

Henry would never in the least
Encourage the heraldic beast:
If there were unicorns about
He went and let the lion out.

The lion, leaping from its chain
And glaring through its tangled mane,
Would stand on end and bark and bound
And bite what unicorns it found.

And when the lion bit a lot
Was Henry sorry? He was not.
What did his jumps betoken? Joy.
He was a bloody-minded boy.

The Unicorn is not a Goose,
And when they saw the lion loose
They grew increasingly aware
That they had better not be there.

And oh, the unicorn is fleet
And spurns the earth with all its feet.
The lion had to snap and snatch
At tips of tails it could not catch.

Returning home in temper bad,
It met the sanguinary lad,
And clasping Henry with its claws
It took his legs between its jaws.

‘Down, lion, down!’ said Henry, ‘cease!
My legs immediately release.’
His formidable feline pet
Made no reply, but only ate.

The last words that were ever said
By Henry’s disappearing head,
In accents of indignant scorn,
Were ‘I am not a unicorn’.

And now you know why Henry sleeps,
And why his Mother mourns and weeps,
And why she also weeps and mourns;
So now be kind to unicorns.

From Housman On Toads And Unicorns