I learned from him [Auden] the parody of A.E. Housman, attributed, whether correctly or not, to Henry Reed, which goes:
The cow lets fall at evening(Harvard Advocate 108, nos. 2-3 [1975]: 49.)
A liquid shower of shit,
And, Terence, you lie under,
And do not mind a bit;
Though, once, you hated it.
A parody of Housman's "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff." Here's the issue as seen in Google Book Search: W.H. Auden, 1907-1973. It contains reminiscences by a whole generation of poets influenced by Auden: Randall Jarrell, Richard Eberhart, Karl Shapiro, William Empson, C. Day Lewis, Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee Williams, and Stephen Spender, among others.
Unfortunately, and as is often the case, Google only allows "snippet" views of the text, and I have no idea who's the author of this particular article. (Quick! Run to your local university library and scrounge me up a copy!) We'll assume, for now, that the attribution is likely incorrect, and assume that it was either Auden himself, or even Sir Herbert Read parodying Housman.
