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In A Shropshire Lad, A. E. Housman recreates a nostalgic world of lost love, lost youth, thwarted friendships, unfaithful girls, male bonding, untimely death and the uncertain glories of being a soldier. The poems deal with the exuberance of youth – its aspirations and disappointments, its naïve certainties and tragic mistakes. Though written in 1895, it struck a chord with the generation of young men who fought in World War I. It was said that every ‘Tommy’ had a copy in his knapsack. It has never been out of print.
A.E. Housman: A Shropshire lad
1887 From Clee to heaven the beacon burns
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
THE RECRUIT: Leave your home behind, lad
REVEILLE: Wake: the silver dusk returning
Oh see how thick the goldcup flowers
When the lad for longing sighs
When smoke stood up from Ludlow
'Farewell to barn and stack and tree'
On moonlit heath and lonesome bank
MARCH: The sun at noon to higher air
On your midnight pallet lying
When I watch the living meet
When I was one-and-twenty
There pass the careless people
Look not in my eyes, for fear
It nods and curtseys and recovers
Twice a week the winter thorough
Oh, when I was in love with you
TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG
Oh fair enough are sky and plain
BREDON HILL: In summertime on Bredon
The street sounds to the soldiers' tread
The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair
Say, lad, have you things to do?
This time of year a twelvemonth past
Along the fields as we came by
'Is my team ploughing'
THE WELSH MARCHES: High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam
THE LENT LILY: 'Tis spring; come out to ramble
Others, I am not the first
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble
From far, from eve and morning
If truth in hearts that perish
THE NEW MISTRESS
On the idle hill of summer
White in the moon the long road lies
As through the wild green hills of Wyre
The winds out of the west land blow
'Tis time, I think by Wenlock town
Into my heart an air that kills
In my own shire, if I was sad
THE MERRY GUIDE: Once in the wind of morning
THE IMMORTAL PART: When I meet the morning beam
Shot? so quick, so clean an ending?
If it chance your eye offend you
Bring, in this timeless grave to throw
THE CARPENTER'S SON: 'Here the hangman stops his cart'
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle
Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly
Clunton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun
Loitering with a vacant eye
Far in a western brookland
THE TRUE LOVER: The lad came to the door at night
With rue my heart is laden
Westward on the high-hilled plains
THE DAY OF BATTLE: 'Far I hear the bugle blow'
You smile upon your friend to-day
When I came last to Ludlow
THE ISLE OF PORTLAND: The star-filled seas are smooth to-night
1887 From Clee to heaven the beacon burns