Alfred Edward Housman: Collected Lyrics
20 / 63
Public-domain lyrics

Loitering with a vacant eye

Alfred Edward Housman

“Loitering with a vacant eye” as printed in A Shropshire Lad (1896).

Alfred Edward Housman: Collected Lyrics Text 20 1896 · historical text
Public domainSong lyricsVictorian song
Complete public-domain lyrics

This text comes from A Shropshire Lad, a historical songbook transcribed on Wikisource and reproduced from the pinned revision linked below.

Verse 1

Loitering with a vacant eye

Along the Grecian gallery,

And brooding on my heavy ill,

I met a statue standing still.

Still in marble stone stood he,

And stedfastly he looked at me.

'Well met,' I thought the look would say,

'We both were fashioned far away;

We neither knew, when we were young,

These Londoners we live among.'

Verse 2

Still he stood and eyed me hard,

An earnest and a grave regard:

'What, lad, drooping with your lot?

I too would be where I am not.

I too survey that endless line.

Of men whose thoughts are not as mine.

Years, ere you stood up from rest,

On my neck the collar prest;

Years when you lay down your ill,

I shall stand and bear it still.

Courage, lad, 't is not for long:

Stand, quit you like stone, be strong.'

So I thought his look would say;

And light on me my trouble lay,

And I stept out in flesh and bone

Manful like the man of stone.

Credits

Written by Alfred Edward Housman

Words by Alfred Edward Housman. Historical text published in A Shropshire Lad (1896); public domain. No claim to a modern recording or arrangement.

Source & text edition

A Shropshire Lad (1896), “Loitering with a vacant eye”

A. E. Housman (1859-1936) died more than 89 years ago; his works entered the public domain in life-plus-70 jurisdictions in 2007, and the 1896 first edition is in the public domain in the United States. Entries credited to other hands are held unless their author died more than 70 years ago.

How to read this historical text and its source

Read the source on Wikisource

View copyright evidence · Transcription terms (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Retrieved 2026-10-27. Line spacing and section labels are adapted for reading. The displayed text follows the linked edition. Editorial notes and abstract artwork are by 52lyrics.
Keep tracing

More from Alfred Edward Housman: Collected Lyrics.

01'T is time, I think, by Wenlock townPublic-domain lyrics021887Public-domain lyrics03Along the field as we came byPublic-domain lyrics04As through the wild green hills of WyrePublic-domain lyrics