Housman liked athletic records of all sorts and seeing them 'cut', or broken, although he does not himself seem to have been much of a swimming man. In the verses on Hero and Leander he develops a contrast, as often in his poetry: in this case, between a classic place and story and a decidedly northern atmosphere - the sputtering torch sounds Scottish and the 'nighted firth' freezing cold, like the Forth or Tay. After a night of love Leander will have a hard job on hand, as demanding as all the other human duties in Housman. But the verse is oddly tender too: perhaps because 'heart', the right word as well as, for him, a more decorous word than 'breast', gives the relation more depth than if it were just a marathon competition in sex and swimming.

LRB 23 July 1992 | PDF Download