| A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896. |
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| XXX. Others, I am not the first |
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| OTHERS, I am not the first, | |
| Have willed more mischief than they durst: | |
| If in the breathless night I too | |
| Shiver now, ’tis nothing new. | |
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| More than I, if truth were told, | 5 |
| Have stood and sweated hot and cold, | |
| And through their reins in ice and fire | |
| Fear contended with desire. | |
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| Agued once like me were they, | |
| But I like them shall win my way | 10 |
| Lastly to the bed of mould | |
| Where there’s neither heat nor cold. | |
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| But from my grave across my brow | |
| Plays no wind of healing now, | |
| And fire and ice within me fight | 15 |
| Beneath the suffocating night. | |
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