A Shropshire Lad

File:Alfred Edward Housman.jpeg

A.E. Housman

A Shropshire Lad is a cycle of sixty-three poems by the English poet [[Alfred Edward Housman](26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936). Some of the better-known poems in the book are "To an Athlete Dying Young", "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now" and "When I Was One-and-Twenty".

The collection was published in 1896 (see 1896 in poetry). Housman originally titled the book The Poems of Terence Hearsay, referring to a character in the volume, but changed the title at the suggestion of his publisher.

Reception

A Shropshire Lad was first published in 1896 at Housman's own expense after several publishers had turned it down, much to the surprise of his colleagues and students. At first the book sold slowly, but during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), Housman's nostalgic depiction of rural life and young men's early deaths struck a chord with English readers and the book became a bestseller. Later, World War I further increased its popularity. Arthur Somervell and other composers were inspired by the folksong-like simplicity of the poems, and the most famous musical settings are by George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams, with others by Ivor Gurney, John Ireland and Ernest John Moeran.

Housman was surprised by the success of A Shropshire Lad because of the deep pessimism and obsession with death throughout, with no place for the consolations of religion. Set in a half-imaginary pastoral Shropshire, "the land of lost content" (in fact Housman wrote most of the poems before visiting the county), the poems explore the fleetingness of love and decay of youth in a spare, uncomplicated style which many critics of the time found out-of-date as compared to the exuberance of some Romantic poets. Housman himself acknowledged the influence of the songs of William Shakespeare, the Scottish Border Ballads and Heinrich Heine, but specifically denied any influence of Greek and Latin classics in his poetry.

Themes and style

The main theme of A Shropshire Lad is mortality, and so living life to its fullest, since death can strike at any time. For example, number IV, titled "Reveille", urges an unnamed "lad" to stop sleeping in the daylight, for "When the journey's over/There'll be time enough to sleep."

One of Housman's most familiar poems is number XIII from A Shropshire Lad, untitled but often anthologised under a title taken from its first line. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations includes no fewer than fourteen of its sixteen lines:

When I was one-and-twenty

I heard a wise man say,

"Give crowns and pounds and guineas

But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies

But keep your fancy free."

But I was one-and-twenty,

No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty

I heard him say again,

"The heart out of the bosom

Was never given in vain;

'Tis paid with sighs a plenty

And sold for endless rue."

And I am two-and-twenty

And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

Poem XXVII, "Is my team ploughing?" is a dialogue between a dead youth and a friend who has survived him. The dead youth asks:

"Is my girl happy,

That I thought hard to leave,

And is she tired of weeping

As she lies down at eve?"

The living replies

"Ay, she lies down lightly,

She lies not down to weep:

Your girl is well contented.

Be still, my lad, and sleep."

As the reader has begun to suspect, two stanzas later the living man acknowledges:

"I cheer a dead man's sweetheart.

Never ask me whose."

Poem LXII, "Terence, this is stupid stuff", (source) is a dialogue in which the poet, asked for "a tune to dance to" instead of his usual "moping melancholy" verse, offers the example of the old King Mithridates who tasted a little of every poison until he inured himself to them all. Similarly, Housman advises the speaker that it is wise to occasionally contemplate and encounter the less-than-merry side of life.

Therefore, since the world has still

Much good, but much less good than ill,

And while the sun and moon endure

Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,

I'd face it as a wise man would,

And train for ill and not for good.

Thematic summary

The work is composed around a series of recurrent themes. It is not a connected narrative, though it can be read as the allegorical narrative of a journey of the heart. The 'I' of the poems, the authorial person, is in two cases named as Terence (VIII, LXII), the 'Shropshire Lad' of the title: however, the poems are not necessarily all in the same voice, and the narrative suggested by the sequence, or themed groups, of poems is a general framework rather than a closely-defined trajectory.

The collection begins with the thought of the Shropshire lads who have died as soldiers in the service of Queen Victoria, as her golden jubilee (1887) is celebrated with a beacon bonfire at Clee (I). There is little time for a lad to live and enjoy the spring (II). Death awaits the soldier (III-IV). Maids are not always kind (V-VI): the farmer also comes to the grave (VII). Some lads murder their brothers, and are hanged (VIII-IX). Love may be unrequited (X). A dead lad's ghost begs the consolation of a last embrace (XI). Unattainable love leaves the lad helpless and lost (XIII-XVI). The playing of a game of cricket or football masks a broken heart (XVII).

The athlete who died young was wise, for he did not outlive his renown (XIX). The poet befriends death in his heart, admiring the courage of the departing soldier (XXII). He envies the country lads who die young and do not grow old (XXIII). Quick, while he is alive and young, put him to use! (XXIV). A lover may die, and his girl will walk out with another (XXV-XXVII). The hostility of the ancient Saxon and Briton are in his blood, and death and begetting are intermingled in him (XXVIII). The storm on Wenlock Edge stirs the same turmoil in him that it stirred in the ancient Romans at Wroxeter (XXXI). He is here but for a moment - take this hand! (XXXII) But if he is of no use to them that he loves, he will go away, perhaps to be a soldier (XXXIV, XXXV). Or one may live an exile from home in London, but never forgetting home and friends (XXXVII, XXXVIII).

The wind sighs across England to him from Shropshire, but he will not see the broom flowering gold on Wenlock Edge (XXXVIII-XL). London is full of dark-hearted men who fear and hate one other, but he will find a use for his living frame while he has a living will (XLIII). The suicide is wise, for he prefers to die cleanly than live in shame (XLIV). Bring him no flowers, but only what will never flower again (XLVI). A carpenter's son once died on the gallows, so that other lads might live (XLVII). He was happy before he was born, but he will endure life for a while: the cure for all sorrows will come in time (XLVIII). If dark-roomed London has its troubles, so do Clun and Knighton, and the only cure for any of them is the grave (L).

Though he is in London, his spirit wanders about his home fields (LII). From the unquiet grave the suicide's ghost visits the beloved (LIII). Those he loved are dead, and other youths eternally re-live his own experiences (LV). Like the lad that becomes a soldier, one can choose death and face it (LVI). Dick is in the graveyard, and Ned is long in jail, as he comes home to Ludlow (LVIII). Take your pack and go: the journey of life leads endlessly through the night (LX). It matters not if he sleeps among the suicides, or among those who died well - they were all his friends(LXI). Do you mock his melancholy thoughts? He has tasted them like Mithridates, and shall die old (LXII). Perhaps these poems are not fashionable, but they will always please other lads like him (LXIII).

Parodies

The uniform style and tone of A Shropshire Lad make it an easy target for parody, as in this example by Humbert Wolfe:

When lads have done with labour

In Shropshire, one will cry

"Let's go and kill a neighbour,"

And t'other answers "Aye!"

So this one kills his cousins,

And that one kills his dad;

And, as they hang by dozens

At Ludlow, lad by lad,

Each of them one-and-twenty,

All of them murderers,

The hangman mutters: "Plenty

Even for Housman's verse."

and this, by Hugh Kingsmill, which, according to Cyril Alington writing in Poets at Play, Housman described as 'the only good parody' of A Shropshire Lad:

What, still alive at twenty-two,

A clean upstanding chap like you?

Why, if your throat is hard to slit,

Slit your girl's and swing for it!

Like enough you won't be glad

When they come to hang you, lad,

But bacon's not the only thing

That's cured by hanging from a string.

When the blotting pad of night

Sucks the latest drop of light,

Lads whose job is still to do

Shall whet their knives and think of you.

Legacy

There are numerous references and memorialisations of this poem in literature and art. One example is a wall hanging A Shropshire Lad located in St Laurence Church, Ludlow, England.

The collection was also commemorated by the Railway company Wrexham & Shropshire when they named Class 67 67012 A Shropshire Lad after running a competition in the Shropshire Star Newspaper. The Shropshire Brewery, Woods, celebrated the 100th of the poem by naming their bitter after it.

In popular culture

• A Shropshire Lad is mentioned in E.M. Forster's A Room with a View. One of the characters, Reverend Beebe, picks up the book from a stack whilst visiting the Emerson home. Lamenting the son's "unconventional" - if not sacrilegious - literary taste, he remarks, "Never heard of it."
• A copy of the book sits on Robbie's desk in Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement.
• Alice Munro's short story "Wenlock Edge" also contains a reference to the poem.
• Salman Rushdie's novel Shalimar the Clown also contains a reference to Housman's poem.
• Tom Stoppard's play The Invention of Love – based on the life and work of A.E. Housman – contains numerous references to and quotes from the poems, but is more focused on his work as a scholar of classics.
• Barbara Stanwyck (as Julia Sturges) reads the entire poem, except for the very last line, to Robert Wagner (as Giff Rogers) in the 1953 film version of Titanic.
• The Roger Zelazny novella "For a Breath I Tarry" references the poem and shares some of the poem's setting and mood with its own.
• "A Shropshire Lad" is mentioned in Dorothy L. Sayers' mystery "Strong Poison". Lord Peter Wimsey's manservant Bunter is putting his Lordship's books away and looks with some curiosity at the chosen few left open on the table, including Housman's "A Shropshire Lad".

• Poem IV "Reveille":
  • The title of James Ellroy's Blood's a Rover comes from Poem IV "Reveille".
• Poem XIII "When I was one-and-twenty":
  • In episode #102 ("The Changing of the Guard") of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, Professor Ellis Fowler reads Poem XIII aloud to his students before relieving them for semester break.
  • The first section of George R. R. Martin's novella "Meathouse Man" takes its title from first line of Poem XIII
• Poem XIX "To An Athlete Dying Young":
  • In Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa, Poem XIX is quoted at the graveside of Denys Finch Hatton
  • In the Simpsons episode "The Last Temptation of Krust", Krusty the Clown's resignation speech includes an excerpt from Poem XIX.
• Poem XXVII "When shall I be dead and rid...":
  • T. H. White quotes the final stanza of Poem XXVIII at the beginning of The Queen of Air and Darkness, part of his Once and Future King series.
• Poem XXXI "On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble":
  • The title of Patrick White's The Tree of Man comes from Poem XXXI, and lines from the poem are quoted in the text.
• Poem XXXII "From far, from eve and morning":
  • J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country quotes Poem XXXII.
• Poem XXXII "From far, from eve and morning":
  • The titles of both Ursula K. Le Guin's anthology, The Wind's Twelve Quarters and the short story "For a Breath I Tarry" by Roger Zelazny come from phrases in Poem XXXII.
• Poem LXII, in Dorothy L. Sayers, Detective Novel, from 1929, "Strong Poison", the title and King Mithridates VI of Pontus, from the poem, are referred to by the protagonist Lord Peter Wimsey.
• Poem XL "The Land of Lost Content":
  • The poem is quoted in its entirety in S. M. Stirling's novel Conquistador.
  • Blue Remembered Hills, a television play by Dennis Potter, takes its title from Poem XL and includes Potter reading from the poem.
  • The movie Walkabout closes with a narrator reading all eight lines of Poem XL.
  • In the Inspector Lewis episode "The Dead of Winter", Hathaway recites Poem XL.
• Poem LIV "With rue my heart is laden":
  • Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History includes the character Henry reading from Poem LIV.

References

Notes

External links

• A Shropshire Lad e-text at University of Virginia
• A Shropshire Lad e-text at Gutenberg