The Land Of Biscay
by A. E. Housman (excerpt)

Instructions: Select the correct answer from each drop-down menu.
Read the passage and then complete these sentences.
The narrator is full of 1)___The poem ends on a 2)_ tone, which is common to many of Housman’s poems.

1)
A)Loneliness
B)Love
C)friendliness
D)grief

2)
A)Contemplative
B)Argumentative
C)Patriotic
D)Pessimistic

Looking from the land of Biscay
Over Ocean to the sky
On the far-beholding foreland
Paced at even grief and I.
There, as warm the west was burning
And the east uncoloured cold,
Down the waterway of sunset
Drove to shore a ship of gold.
Gold of mast and gold of cordage,
Gold of sail to sight was she,
And she glassed her ensign golden
In the waters of the sea.

Oh, said I, my friend and lover,
Take we now that ship and sail
Outward in the ebb of hues and
Steer upon the sunset trail;
Leave the night to fall behind us
And the clouding counties leave:
Help for you and me is yonder,
In a haven west of eve.

Under hill she neared the harbour
Till the gazer could behold
On the golden deck the steersman
Standing at the helm of gold,
Man and ship and sky and water
Burning in a single flame;
And the mariner of Ocean,
He was calling as he came:
From the highway of the sunset
He was shouting on the sea,
"Landsman of the land of Biscay,
Have you help for grief and me?"

The poet A. E. Housman is known for his pessimistic themes. A man struggling with his sexuality at a time when being a homosexual was considered a crime, he carried his feelings of loneliness and resentment with him even into old age. In the poem we are analyzing here, "The Land of Biscay", the speaker is accompanied by grief. They both look out over the ocean and see a golden ship sailing toward them. It seems that the speaker hopes to board the ship and sail away, to where happiness is. Much to his surprise, however, the man on the ship is also accompanied by grief and has come the land where the speaker is hoping to find some relief. As we can see, the theme is a pessimistic one: there is no escaping sadness, there is nowhere we can go to get rid of it.