I do love Housman

[mme_hardy]

Her strong enchantments failing,
  Her towers of fear in wreck,
Her limbecks dried of poisons
  And the knife at her neck,

The Queen of air and darkness
  Begins to shrill and cry,
'O young man, O my slayer,
  To-morrow you shall die.'

O Queen of air and darkness,
  I think 'tis truth you say,
And I shall die to-morrow;
  But you will die to-day.

(Anybody want to expound on why it's "I shall" vs. "you will"?)

Comments

[cofax7]

hmmm. "Shall" is intent, or an order, but "will" is descriptive? Legal language uses "shall" but not "will", leaving open the possibility that it won't happen. ("Will" is sufficiently firm that I always take it out of environmental documents and replace it with "would", to show that the decision has not yet been finalized...)

[mme_hardy]

I never knew that about legal language! I always thought "shall" sounded vaguely more imperative in "you shall be taken to a place of execution..." than "will" would have.

[sollers]

I learned it the other way round in the 1950s: "shall" as statement of fact, "will" as having an element of intention. But it was already becoming less consistent, though I did still get responses to " I will do it tomorrow" like "Whether you want to or not, it's got to be done."

[sollers]

Further point: the expression "willy-nilly" is rarely heard nowadays, though fairly common in my childhood. It came from "will he, nill he" - whether he wants to or not.

[sollers]

In all the (English) legal documents I have encountered, it is always "shall".

[white_hart]

In older British English usage, "shall" was used with first-person pronouns and "will" with second and third persons (see here for more exposition), with the other used to express determination to do something, so Housman is simply following the grammatical rule of his time; "I will" would have expressed an actual wish to die rather than an acceptance of fact.

[nineveh_uk]

The example I always remember for this one is "Cinderella, you shall go to the ball!" Though the poem does it rather nicely, too, with the two you shall/you will expressing the thing that is desired, but in the future, and the thing that is going to happen as fact right now.

I'm very fond of Housman, and this one is a favourite.

[mme_hardy]

I love Housman a lot. He has a limited emotional range (in verse), but within that range he's perfect.

[ellen_fremedon]

This! There's a good, if macabre, mnemonic (CN suicide):

A would-be suicide swims out to sea saying "I will drown! No one shall save me!" On his way he passes a hapless victim of cramp, who despairs "I shall drown! No one will save me."

[mme_hardy]

Oh, I *like* that.

[kore]

Heh, that's also how I learned it (from an old Espy book about words I think).

[ellen_fremedon]

Words at Play! That's where I learned it, too.

[kore]

DAMN I HAVE NEVER EVEN MET ANYONE WHO HEARD OF THAT BOOK BEFORE. I loved it as a kid! I still have it. He was great.

[mme_hardy]

Thank you so much.

[vom_marlowe]

In this instance, I see the following:

The Queen uses the phrase 'To-morrow you shall die'. Even at the time the poem was written, tomorrow was usually spelled without the hyphen. The Queen, who is Fey and old, is using older language in her dialogue.

The young man's voice, or POV, if you will, is using more modern language, thus 'You will die'. However, when he echoes her direct words, he repeats her phrasing, 'to-day' and 'I shall'.

That's my read, anyway.

[mme_hardy]

I think in this case white_hart has it. It's not only a usage thing but a UK usage thing.

[dejla]

This is one of my favorite Housmans.

[larryhammer]

I learned it as "shall" is intentional/desiderative future ("You shall get up on time in the morning") while "will" is determined future ("The sun will rise in the morning"), but clearly that's not all that's happening here, with the different forms for different persons. So see above and ignore me.