A E Houseman, for my money, was a superb writer of sentimental love lyrics for the inexperienced and frustrated young. If he'd been born half a century later, he'd have had a steady job in the pop music industry. It's true that judged by the very highest standards, his work is not 'great' poetry. But for all that, there's no need to sneer at it, as so many 'serious' literary critics do nowadays.   

Read Houseman at nineteen and you think, "Ah yes, that's just how it feels". Read him again at thirty and you're liable to experience some embarrassment. Not because of the verse itself, but because of the sensations (and the blunders) it reminds you of so vividly.

However, the old fellow had a lighter side too, as this short offering demonstrates:

Oh, when I was in love with you, then I was clean and brave,
And miles around, the wonder grew how well I did behave.
But now the fancy passes by, and nothing will remain,
And miles around, they say that I am quite myself again.

In view of current events in Iraq, we might also recall the following lines of Houseman's, written just after World War 1:

Here dead we lie, because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is, and we were young.

Wassail!