Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
Typical of many of Housman's poems, the w0rds in this poem are few but carefully chosen. There is an interesting contrast in the first two lines between the passivity suggested by the phrase "here dead we lie"--as if death was something that just happened to these men--and the sense of action in the next phrase--"because we did not choose." Moreover, the choice here--not to live--is rather unsettling. The reason for that choice, patriotism--not to "shame the land/From which we sprung'"--is certainly one that has motivated many men over the centuries, but also one that not everyone would applaud. It is difficult to miss the irony of the next two lines--"Life, to be sure/Is nothing much to lose"--nor the sadness of the closing lines--"But young men think it is/And we were young." This, of course, is one of the most tragic aspects of war--the death of the young, who will never experience all of the joys that a life lived to its natural end can offer.
In short, Housman's poem is a rather moving evocation of the tragedy of war. And yet, there is also an irony about this poem, given that its author was an atheist. Housman turned to atheism a number of years after the death of his mother on his twelfth birthday. As an atheist, Housman presumably believed that human existence is completely governed by the laws of nature, that any choices we make are illusory because there is no genuine free will. Yet in this poem he speaks of making a choice to live or die. Moreover, since (from the viewpoint of atheism), human beings are merely the products of blind evolution, they have no intrinsic value, and so, the death of anyone, even a young person, cannot be considered tragic--rather, it is simply something that happens. Nevertheless, in his poem Housman clearly portrays the death of young men in war as tragic. Furthermore, seemingly noble sentiments like the patriotism implied in the first stanza are meaningless from an atheistic perspective. In other words, Housman's atheism provides no warrant for the ideas underlying his poem.
To be fair, Housman was hardly the first person (atheist or otherwise) to be philosophically inconsistent. Nevertheless, what this poem helps demonstrates is the fact that atheists find it very difficult to completely rid themselves of ideas that ultimately derive from belief in God. The question we might want to ask here is why.
Image of A.E. Housman from Wikipedia