2. TWICE A WEEEK THE WINTER
THOROUGH
ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN
3. TWICE A WEEK THE WINTER
THOROUGH
• Twice a week the winter thorough
• Here stood I too keep the goal:
• Football then was fighting sorrow
• For the young man’s soul.
• Now in Maytime to the wicket
• Out I march with bat and pad:
• See the son of grief at cricket
• Trying to be glad.
• Try I will; no harm in trying:
• Wonder ‘tis how little mirth
• Keeps the bones of man from lying
• On the bed of earth.
4. DISCUSSION OF THE POEM [3rd stanza]
• In the last part of the poem, as a summation of
the matter, the poet looks back on his youthful
attempt to fight sorrow through the medium of
sport. He says, ‘Try I will’. He would keep trying to
keep sadness off , because trials certainly do no
harm, though success may be limited. After all,
he says, it is a wonder how little mirth, how little
enjoyment in life, keeps a person from just giving
up living entirely, and becoming merely dead
bones lying on the earth.
5. • Housman often employs such bitter-sweet
paradoxes to embody a battle of life itself. It
takes but a little pleasure in life to make a
person want to keep living, just like playing
football, or a game of cricket! In the last
stanza, he speaks for the entire humanity.
6. QUESTIONS
• What advice does the poet give to the readers
in the last stanza?
• Identify the rhyming words in the last stanza.
7. ANSWERS
• The poet, in the last stanza states that he will
try his luck by playing again because a little
mirth derived from a game can make one live
healthier and happier and longer on earth.
Thereby he exhorts the readers to engage
themselves in some sport so that they may
lead a better life.
• Trying – lying
Mirth - earth
8. • Comment on the following lines :
“ Football then was fighting sorrow for the
young man’s soul “
9. ANSWER
• The earth is covered with snowflakes during
winter and gives out no grain or fruit. Winter
thus marks the earth’s sorrow which the
young man was trying to overcome by playing
games like football.
