Laurence Housman

Laurence Housman (1865—1959) is an English playwright, writer and illustrator, and the younger brother of the better-known poet A.E. Housman. He worked for several London publishers as an illustrator on such books as Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1893), and his sister’s novella The Were-Wolf (1896). As a writer he is best known for his plays, beginning with the Nativity play Bethlehem (1902). Along with his sister, Clemence Houseman, he became active in the suffrage movement.

He caught my attention as a poet to include in this blog due to his book Spikenard: A Book of Devotional Love-Poems (Grant Richards, 1898), and how frequently in the other things he wrote, his subject matter related to Biblical themes.

Housman was raised in an Anglican household, and became quite interested in transitioning his church affiliation from Anglican to Catholic when in his early thirties, going so far as to attend a Catholic retreat that culminated in an Easter Sunday Mass, which Housman, in his hesitance, only observed. He said,
-----“A week later I went to Paris on journalistic work for the Manchester
-----Guardian and when I saw, in some of the lovely French churches, the
-----tawdry statues, emblems, and ornaments with which modern
-----Catholicism allows its altars to be desecrated, I began to be glad of
-----my escape: unreasonably glad, perhaps, but I cannot dissociate false
-----art from false worship. If there be a Personal God, the beauty they
-----produce and cherish is for me the surest sign that His worshippers
-----have the truth in them: if beauty is betrayed, God is betrayed also.
-----And so the foolish vulgarity of modern Roman Catholic art was a
-----decisive aid to my escape from St. Peter's net an escape for which
-----I became more and more thankful as the years went on.”

Not that aesthetic concerns are unimportant, but this subjective (art-based rather than theological) argument, and the phrase “If there be a Personal God,” causes me to question the depth of Housman’s faith, which is borne out in some other details of his life. Even so, his poetry is well worth considering.

The following poem is the title piece from his 1898 collection, Spikenard.

Spikenard

As one who came with ointments sweet,
Abettors to her fleshly guilt,
And brake and poured them at Thy Feet,
And Worshipped Thee with spikenard spilt:
So from a body full of blame,
And tongue too deeply versed in shame,
Do I pour speech upon Thy Name.
O Thou, if tongue may yet beseech,
Near to Thine awful Feet let reach
This broken spikenard of my speech!

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of six poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), plus three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is now available from Paraclete Press.