A Shropshire Lad

A Shropshire Lad is a collection 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", "The Lent Lily" and "When I Was One-and-Twenty".

The collection was published in 1896. Housman originally titled the book The Poems of Terence Hearsay, referring to a character there, but changed the title at the suggestion of his publisher.^[1]

Reception

A Shropshire Lad was first published in 1896 at Housman's own expense after several publishers had turned it down. His colleagues and students were surprised by the emotional depth and vulnerability it revealed in an apparently distant and self-contained man. At first the book sold slowly, but during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), Housman's nostalgic description of rural life and young men's early deaths struck a chord with English readers and the book became a best-seller. Its popularity increased during World War I. 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 (Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad and Bredon Hill and Other Songs) and Ralph Vaughan Williams (On Wenlock Edge), with others by Ivor Gurney, John Ireland and Ernest John Moeran.

Housman was surprised by the success of A Shropshire Lad, thinking that its deep pessimism and obsession with death, without the consolations of religion, would not appeal to a Victorian audience. The poems are set in a half-imaginary pastoral Shropshire, "the land of lost content", and Housman wrote most of them before visiting the county. He described the transience of love and youth in simple, unadorned language that many critics of the time thought old-fashioned. 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 the need to seize the day, because death can strike at any time. For example, number IV, titled "Reveille", urges an unnamed "lad" not to sleep away the sunlight, 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."

Two stanzas later the living man acknowledges, what the reader has begun to suspect:

"I cheer a dead man's sweetheart.

Never ask me whose."

Poem LXII, "Terence, this is stupid stuff", is a dialogue in which the poet, asked for "a tune to dance to" instead of his usual "moping melancholy" verse, says that his verse is not intended to be merry but to console its readers in an "embittered hour" against the troubles of life. He offers the example of the old King Mithridates, who tasted a little of every poison until he inured himself to them all. Housman advises the speaker that it is wise to occasionally contemplate and prepare for the darker 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

A Shropshire Lad contains several repeated themes. It is not a connected narrative, though it can be read as an allegory of a heart's journey through life. 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 all in the same voice and the stories they tell are not intended as a single coherent narrative.

The collection begins by paying tribute to 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).^[2] 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) and 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 consoles a broken heart (XVII).

The athlete who died young was lucky, for he did not outlive his renown (XIX). The poet exchanges a glance with a marching soldier and wishes him well, though thinking they will never cross paths again (XXII). He envies the country lads who die young and do not grow old (XXIII). Quick, while he is alive and young, allow him to work beside you! (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 he owes his life to violence and rape (XXVIII). The storm on Wenlock Edge symbolizes the same turmoil in his soul as the Romans knew 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 without 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 cold-hearted men who fear and hate one other, but he will make the best of life 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 crowded and noisy London has its troubles, so do quiet 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^[3] 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: death will be a journey into eternal 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 used them like the poisons sampled by 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 easy to 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 to and commemorations of this collection in literature and art. One example is a wall hanging A Shropshire Lad displayed 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 anniversary of the book 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."^[4]
• In Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), the "Medici Press edition of A Shropshire Lad" is among the "meagre and commonplace" books owned by the protagonist Charles Ryder during his first year at Oxford.
• A copy of the book sits on Robbie's desk in Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement.
• 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 Number XIII, except for the very last line, to Robert Wagner (as Giff Rogers) in the 1953 film version of Titanic.
• "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.
• In Walker Percy's 1960 novel The Moviegoer, the narrator mentions that his father died in Crete during WWII with a copy of A Shropshire Lad in his pocket.
• In episode 102 of The Twilight Zone, titled "Changing of the Guard," XIII of A Shropshire Lad is read to the class by actor Donald Pleasence, who played the character Professor Ellis Fowler.
• Mark Peel's biography of Anthony Chenevix-Trench, who translated A Shropshire Lad into Latin while a prisoner of the Japanese in World War 2, is entitled The Land of Lost Content.
• In Nicholson Baker’s novel Traveling Sprinkler (2013), the hero refers to an incident of self abuse: “Boy, I waggled my Shropshire lad that night”.^[5]
• "A Shropshire Lad" is the first song on the 1997 album Voyage to the Bottom of the Road by the band Half Man Half Biscuit
• Noël Coward included the line "Housman really wrote 'The Shropshire Lad' about the boy" in the lyrics of his song Mad About the Boy.

Specific poems

• Poem II "Loveliest of trees the cherry now"
  • Diana Dors as Mary Hilton, recites the poem "Loveliest of trees the cherry now" before being hanged, in the 1956 British film Yield to the Night
• 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 No. 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 IX "On moonlit heath and lonesome bank";
  • Dorothy L. Sayers uses the penultimate stanza ("When he will hear the stroke of eight/And not the stroke of nine") as the epigraph for the final chapter of "Busman's Honeymoon", the last novel of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries
• Poem XIX "To An Athlete Dying Young":
  • In Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa, Poem XIX is recited 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.
  • This poem specifically, and the A Shropshire Lad collection generally, are significant in Alice Munro's short story "Wenlock Edge".
  • The poem is quoted in Alan Bennett's play "The History Boys". Its ambiguity and theme of the passage of time and (ancient) "trouble" are particularly relevant to the story of the undercurrents of love inter all the characters, apart from the figure of the headmaster, who is untroubled by love.
• 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.^[6]
• Poem XXXV "On the idle hill of summer":
  • The title of the first episode of the BBC documentary series on World War I, The Great War, is from the first line (and title) of Poem XXXV.
• Poem XXXVI "White in the moon":
  • The poem is sung by the protagonist, Will, in Susan Cooper's novel The Dark is Rising, the second novel in her The Dark is Rising Sequence.
• Poem LXII
  • In Dorothy L. Sayers 1929 Detective Novel, "Strong Poison", the title and King Mithridates 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.
  • The poem is partially quoted and a line is used as the title of Francis King's 1948 novel An Air That Kills.
  • 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. The poem is briefly featured again in a funeral scene in the episode "Down Among the Fearful".
  • The poem is quoted in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Half of a Yellow Sun.
  • The poem opens Terence Davies' film documentary of Liverpool Of Time and the City.
• Poem LIV "With rue my heart is laden":
  • Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History includes the character Henry reading from Poem LIV.
• Poem LXII "Terence, this is stupid stuff":
  • Randall Garrett's science-fiction novella The Highest ... Treason contains a line modelled on "Malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man", namely "Hell does more than Heaven can to wake the fear of God in man", typographically presented as a quotation.

References

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: A Shropshire Lad

• A Shropshire Lad e-text at University of Virginia
• A Shropshire Lad e-text at Gutenberg
• A Shropshire Lad public domain audiobook at LibriVox