
 XLIV

Shot? so quick, so clean an ending?
 Oh that was right, lad, that was brave:
Yours was not an ill for mending,
 'Twas best to take it to the grave.
The poem was inspired, according to Housman’s brother Laurence, by a daily paper’s paragraph notice of an 18-year-old  Woolwich   Cadet’s  suicide.
Shot? so quick so clean an ending?