A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems : The Collected Poems of A.E. Housman

by A.E. Housman, Nick Laird (Introduction), Archie Burnett (Notes)

A.E. Housman was one of the best-loved poets of his day, and "A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems" is a collection of poems whose elegant simplicity of form belies their hidden complexities. This "Penguin Classics" edition is introduced by Nick Laird with revisions by Archie Burnett and an afterword by John Sparrow. 'What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those?' In this collection, A. E. Housman's poems, including "To an Athlete Dying Young", "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now" and "When I Was One-and-Twenty", conjure up a potent and idyllic rural world imbued with a poignant sense of loss and sadness. Their scope is wide - ranging from religious doubt and doomed love to intense nostalgia for the countryside and patriotic celebration of the life of the soldier - and they are made all the more memorable by their distinctive diction and perfectly modulated rhythm and sound. This volume brings together the works Housman published in his lifetime, "A Shropshire Lad" (1896) and "Last Poems" (1922), along with the posthumous selections "More Poems" and "Additional Poems", and three translations of extracts from Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides that display his mastery of Classical literature. This edition has been revised by Archie Burnett and includes updated notes on the text and indexes of first lines and titles. In his afterword, John Sparrow discusses Housman's methods of writing and melancholic temperament.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, 19th Century, Nature, LGBT, Queer

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 27, 2013

About the author

A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922) apparently published works of British poet and scholar Alfred Edward Housman, brother of Laurence Housman and Clemence Housman.

To his fellow noted classicists, his critical editing of Manilius earned him enduring fame.

The eldest of seven children and a gifted student, Housman won a scholarship to Oxford, where he performed well but for various reasons neglected philosophy and ancient history subjects that failed to pique his interest and consequently failed to gain a degree. Frustrated, he gained at job as a patent clerk but continued his research in the classical studies and published a variety of well-regarded papers. After a decade with such his reputation, he ably obtain a position at University College London in 1902. In 1911, he took the Kennedy professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life.

As a scholar, Housman concentrated on Latin. He published a five-volume critical edition, the definitive text, of his work on " Astronomica " of Manilus from 1903 to 1930. Housman the poet produced lyrics that express a Romantic pessimism in a spare, simple style. In some of the asperity and directness in lyrics and also scholarship, Housman defended common sense with a sarcastic wit that helped to make him widely feared.

There are several biographies of Housman, and a The Housman Society http://www.housman-society.co.uk/

Reviews

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction, by Nick Laird

--A Shropshire Lad

Last Poems
--I. The West
--II. 'As I gird on for fighting . . .'
--III. 'Her strong enchantments failing . . .'
--IV. Illic Jacet
--V. Grenadier
--VI. Lancer
--VII. 'In valleys green and still . . .'
--VIII. 'Soldier from the wars returning . . .'
--IX. 'The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers . . .'
--X. 'Could man be drunk for ever . . .'
--XI. 'Yonder see the morning blink . . .'
--XII. 'The laws of God, the laws of man . . .'
--XIII. The Deserter
--XIV. The Culprit
--XV. Eight O'Clock
--XVI. Spring Morning
--XVII. Astronomy
--XVIII. 'The rain, it streams on stone and hillock . . .'
--XIX. 'In midnights of November . . .'
--XX. 'The night is freezing fast . . .'
--XXI. 'The fairies break their dances . . .'
--XXII. 'The sloe was lost in flower . . .'
--XXIII. 'In the morning, in the morning . . .'
--XXIV. Epithalamium
--XXV. The Oracles
--XXVI. 'The half-moon westers low, my love . . .'
--XXVII. 'The sigh that heaves the grasses . . .'
--XXVIII. 'Now dreary dawns the eastern light . . .'
--XXIX. 'Wake not for the world-heard thunder . . .'
--XXX. Sinner's Rue
--XXXI. Hell Gate
--XXXII. 'When I would muse in boyhood . . .'
--XXXIII. 'When the eye of day is shut . . .'
--XXXIV. The First of May
--XXXV. 'When first my way to fair I took . . .'
--XXXVI. Revolution
--XXXVII. Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
--XXXVIII. 'Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough . . .'
--XXXIX. 'When summer's end is nighing . . .'
--XL. 'Tell me not here, it needs not saying . . .'
--XLI. Fancy's Knell

More Poems
--I. Easter Hymn
--II. 'When Israel out of Egypt came . . .'
--III. 'For these of old the trader . . .'
--IV. The Sage to the Young Man
--V. Diffugere Nives
--VI. 'I to my perils . . .'
--VII. 'Stars, I have seen them fall . . .'
--VIIIA. 'Give me a land of boughs in leaf . . .'
--VIIIB. 'Alas, the country whence I fare . . .'
--VIIIC. 'And one remembers, and one forgets . . .'
--IX. 'When green buds hang in the elm like dust . . .'
--X. 'The weeping Pleiads wester . . .'
--XI. 'The rainy Pleiads wester . . .'
--XII. 'I promise nothing: friends will part . . .'
--XIII. 'I lay me down and slumber . . .'
--XIV. 'The farms of home lie lost in even . . .'
--XV. 'Tarry, delight; so seldom met . . .'
--XVI. 'How clear, how lovely bright . . .'
--XVII. 'Bells in tower at evening toll . . .'
--XVIII. 'Delight it is in youth and May . . .'
--XIX. 'The mill-stream, now that noises cease . . .'
--XX. 'Like mine, the veins of these that slumber . . .'
--XXI. 'The world goes none the lamer . . .'
--XXII. 'Ho, everyone that thirsteth . . .'
--XXIII. 'Crossing alone the nighted ferry . . .'
--XXIV. 'Stone, steel, dominions pass . . .'
--XXV. 'Yon flakes that fret the eastern sky . . .'
--XXVI. I Counsel You Beware
--XXVII. 'To stand up straight and tread the turning mill . . .'
--XXVIII. 'He, standing hushed, a pace or two apart . . .'
--XXIX. 'From the wash the laundress sends . . .'
--XXX. 'Shake hands, we shall never be friends; give over . . .'
--XXXI. 'Because I liked you better . . .'
--XXXII. 'Their seed the sowers scatter . . .'
--XXXIII. 'On forelands high in heaven . . .'
--XXXIV. 'Young is the blood that yonder . . .'
--XXXV. 'Half-way, for one commandment broken . . .'
--XXXVI. 'Here dead lie we because we did not choose . . .'
--XXXVII. 'I did not lose my heart in summer's even . . .'
--XXXVIII. 'By shores and woods and steeples . . .'
--XXXIX. 'My dreams are of a field afar . . .'
--XL. 'Farewell to a name and a number . . .'
--XLI. 'He looked at me with eyes I thought . . .'
--XLII. A. J. J.
--XLIII. 'I wake from dreams and turning . . .'
--XLIV. 'Far known to sea and shore . . .'
--XLV. 'Smooth between sea and land . . .'
--XLVI. The Land of Biscay
--XLVII. 'O thou that from thy mansion . . .'
--XLVIII. Parta Quies

Additional Poems
--I. Atys
--II. 'Oh were he and I together . . .'
--III. 'When Adam walked in Eden young . . .'
--IV. 'It is no gift I tender . . .'
--V. 'Here are the skies, the planets seven . . .'
--VI. 'Ask me no more, for fear I should reply . . .'
--VII. 'He would not stay for me; and who can wonder . . .'
--VIII. 'Now to her lap the incestuous earth . . .'
--IX. 'When the bells justle in the tower . . .'
--X. 'Oh on my breast in days hereafter . . .'
--XI. 'Morning up the eastern stair . . .'
--XIA. '---They shall have breath that never were . . .'
--XII. 'Stay, if you list, O passer by the way . . .'
--XIII. 'Oh turn not in from marching . . .'
--XIV. 'Oh is it the jar of nations . . .'
--XV. 'Tis five years since, 'An end,' said I . . .'
--XVI. 'Some can gaze and not be sick . . .'
--XVII. 'The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do . . .'
--XVIII. 'Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists . . .'
--XIX. The Defeated
--XX. 'I shall not die for you . . .'
--XXI. New Year's Eve
--XXII. R. L. S.
--XXIII. The Olive

Translations

--Aeschylus, 'Septem Contra Thebas' (lines 848-60)
--Sophocles, 'Oedipus Coloneus' (lines 1211-48)
--Euripides, 'Alcestis' (lines 962-1005)

Appendix: The Name and Nature of Poetry: The Leslie Stephen Lecture, Delivered by A. E. Housman at Cambridge on 9 May 1933

Notes on the Text
Index of First Lines
Index of Titled Poems

[Omar · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://youtu.be/BHoAQW_DBI4?t=158
As an adolescent, I could not see the value of my mother teaching me to recite verses of the Quran in Classical Arabic. Like the audience and other panelists, I felt it was a waste of time, with no real-world application. Only in recent years have I seen the value of my mother's effort.

I would have avoided poetry for far too long had it not been for Peter Hitchens. Thanks to this segment, which I had watched years prior, I gave Chinese Poetry as translated by Waley a chance towards the end of 2020. The experience was a positive one, to the point that I have gradually incorporated poetry into my yearly readings. Therefore, I felt it only right to return to the poet Hitchens quoted in the video above.

I can't express sufficient gratitude to my mother and Peter for furnishing my mind with beauty.

[giso0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

When everywhere you turn someone is quoting Housman, there's only one thing to do.

While a considerable number of his contemporaries were obsessed with angels and stuff, his poems related the finality of death in a simple and mostly straightforward way.
As he himself remarks, these verses are for "all ill-treated fellows," and they help to "train for ill," because in life "luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure," even if some of them might give "a chap the belly-ache."

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite ever book of poems. However, there are actually four books of poems collected in this one volume and they are not of equal quality. In fact the quality declines. This is because the final two books were posthumous collections put together by Housman's brother and it is highly unlikely that Housman himself would have approved of this. Nonetheless the strength of the first two books A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems is such that it doesn't matter that the posthumous collections are weaker. If anything the weaker books set the former two in context and show just how brilliant the earlier books are. Having said this, there are still truly excellent poems to be found in the two posthumous books.

As for A Shropshire Lad I avoided it and Housman for years because (for some strange reason) I assumed it was going to be dull, flowery and typically Victorian. It isn't. Far from it! The lyricism of these incredibly concise and refined poems is as extraordinary and moving as the poems in what was previously my favourite poetry collection of all time (FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam) but their range is greater, although still focused mainly on a specific set of very important themes, namely longing, the passing of time, impossible love, transience, honour and friendship.

Housman has successfully achieved what is the ultimate aim of the very best poetry. To take an emotion and transfer it directly (or almost directly) into the mind and heart of a reader. This is an act akin to telepathy. For whole moments at a time we are sharing Housman's feelings so perfectly that we are him and also everyone else who has ever had that emotion. It's a phenomenon of human community and continuity that bypasses the usual constraints of time and space.

I read books and then I give them away to other people who I think might enjoy them. It's very rare that I keep books I have read. Only a handful of books fall into this category. This book will be one of those. I will keep it, cherish it and no doubt consult it from time to time, replaying the magnificent rhythms of his superb poetry, probably until I know many of the poems by heart.

[Matthew Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Malaise, death, but also kind of fun.



Because I liked you better

Than suits a man to say,

It irked you, and I promised

To throw the thought away.



To put the world between us

We parted, stiff and dry;

'Good-bye,' said you, 'forget me.'

'I will, no fear', said I.



If here, where clover whitens

The dead man's knoll, you pass,

And no tall flower to meet you

Starts in the trefoiled grass,



Halt by the headstone naming

The heart no longer stirred,

And say the lad that loved you

Was one that kept his word.

[Phillip Marsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Housman was seemingly a horny lad (almost incel-like at times) who, for all his lamenting (or at least remarking on) the deaths of young lads in war, also seems pretty keen on making sure they don’t chicken out like ‘cowards’…

His narrow scope of subjects makes this collection of all his works a a bit repetitive, but there are a fair number of poems I did love.

Some favourites:

I Counsel You Beware
Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall
Hell Gate
The Laws of God, the Laws of Man
Crossing Alone the Nighted Ferry
Reveille
Into My Heart an Air That Kills
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble

[Colleen McDonnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect collection of AEH's poems. I still have the copy my sister bought for me 25 years ago.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable but the best part is his essay about poetry, absolutely british and erudite!

[Adam]

So ends my foray into reading poetry.

[Tristan Shropshire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emergency read due to being in a state of infatuation.

Unexpectedly deals with death a lot, also bonus points for the shared name.

3.5/5

[Pollymoore3 · Rating 3 out of 5]

At school many years ago we compared Herrick’s “Fair Daffodils” and Housman’s “Loveliest of Trees”. I don’t think it’s possible to say which is “best”: they are both perfect. I remember my mother quoting or reading “On Wenlock Edge” when I was only about 7 or 8, and young enough to be a bit frightened at the Roman who was ashes under Uricon, even though I had no real idea of death. The ruins at Viroconium or Wroxeter are surprisingly big, pillars standing in a field as I recall once seeing. Housman gave us the phrases “the coloured counties”, “blue remembered hills” and "the land of lost content". Favourites: “Loveliest of Trees” and “On Wenlock Edge”. My copy is a tiny hardback still in its yellow and black dustjacket.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

It shows my ignorance of Housman that until I started reading this I thought that A Shropshire Lad was one lengthy poem rather than a collection of much shorter ballads. My favourite poem was the second (Loveliest of trees, the cherry now/Is hung with bloom along the bough). Shortly after this Housman's unvarying style began to weary somewhat, though the greater variety in his subject matter did keep my interest up. His poems favouring suicide now seem in very poor taste, but I suppose were of his time. Others have borne their years better, especially, I suppose, if you live and love Shropshire.

[Ollie Norton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unbelievably touching. Incredibly relevant today. The dissatisfied, lonely, meaningless male throughout is such a powerful figure that resonates with today's youth. 'Nothing but the Night' LX is an amazing place to start that epitomises this collection. II is another favourite. The simple language used throughout evokes feelings of comfort that juxtapose with the often dark subject matter. It is unpretentious and real. Its amazing.

[Katie Baker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this after being inspired by a novel I read to read some Housman. Some poems really spoke to me, others less so. It was hard to believe they were written before the first world war because they seem to fit with it so well.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

O woe, woe,
People are born and die,
We also shall be dead pretty soon
Therefore let us act as if we were
Dead already.

The bird sits on the hawthorn tree
But he dies also, presently.
Some lads get hung, and some get shot.
Woeful is this human lot.
Woe! woe, etcetera . . . .

London is a woeful place,
Shropshire is much pleasanter.
Then let us smile a little space
Upon fond nature's morbid grace.
Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera . . . .

A E Housman may be one of the most parodied of British poets. There are numerous spoof versions of A Shropshire Lad, but none better than Ezra Pound’s poem, quoted above. Having said that, Pound, a gifted parodist, wrote poems that were far more deserving of mockery than his targets.

Set against this is the other side of Housman, immensely popular in his day (after a shaky start). The rigid verse structure of his poems makes them easy to set to music, and this has been done many times, notably by Vaughan Williams.

George Orwell also speaks of Housman’s popularity with young men of the time, including Orwell himself. Housman said that he wrote his verse to appeal to young men, and there are all kinds of reasons why this is true.

Firstly there is the hedonistic pessimism, always attractive to hormonal young men who are given to melancholia (it may explain why my lifelong love of Thomas Hardy’s poetry began when I was of a similar age). Housman has a macabre and gloomy sense of humour, and seems to enjoy being miserable. His poems frequently veer towards death, and even hanging.

Then there is the theme of wartime, which runs through Housman’s works. This is surprising since A Shropshire Lad was written before the two most significant wars of the period, the Boer War and World War One. Housman was presumably influenced by the colonialist wars in places such as the Sudan, South Africa, and other such places. However the timing proved to be fortunate. In a few years, poetry about death in wartime would be resonant.

Of course there is an element of nonsense about it. Housman was no soldier, and I am not aware of him having connections to the military via his family. Then again Housman did not even live in Shropshire. He romanticised a county, and yet his poems are full of geographical errors concerning the location.

Why would Housman wish to draw in a young male readership? Perhaps because he was homosexual. The poetry has a surprising amount of ambiguity. Somehow men are always gazing at Housman, perhaps an early example of gaydar. This may explain his love of soldiers – who does not like a man in uniform? – and why he describes both a male and female lover sighing when they think about soldiers.

In other poems, Housman describes a love triangle in which one man wins out when the other man dies, but there is a sneaking suggestion that maybe the men like each other as well.

What can we say about Housman as a poet? He is certainly not as well-renowned as many of his contemporaries. I suspect Virginia Woolf would consider that he is the poetic equivalent of the Edwardians she despised. His work is traditional and looks back to earlier poems. There is no modernism here.

Hardy and Yates fare better, though not fitting into the Modernist tradition. Yates wrote about contemporary political events, and some of his poetry was a little weird. Hardy was a traditional poet, but he shook his fist at God in an age when religion was dying. In any case Hardy was a consummate versifier, who wrote with such beauty and perfect choice of vocabulary that he takes the breath away.

Housman is not so great a poet. His verse is strictly limited. He sticks within the same basic style, and writes about the same themes. There are some memorable moments, but most of the verse is fairly flat and even.

Take A Shropshire Lad. Here we have 63 poems but they do not form a narrative. There is no story arc, however loose. It is merely a collection of poems. If an editor mischievously took a few poems out, and replaced them with other works by Housman, would many readers notice the difference?

Nonetheless there are reasons why Housman’s work is enduring and perhaps more appealing than that of Modernists such as Eliot and Pound. Housman may have been old-fashioned, but this meant writing in a manner that was direct and easy to follow. The subject matter was not exactly profound, but when you strip ‘The Waste Land’ of its allusive and abstract trimmings, we could say the same about it.

Housman does tap into a mood. If you share his mood and feel the same way that he does, even if only for a few years in your life, then perhaps you can feel a lifelong attachment to his work. Personally I feel the miserablism is a little over-done and contrived, but perhaps I came to Housman too late in life to get hooked by him.

Still I cannot deny that I felt much pleasure in reading Housman’s poetry, and I found myself turning the page to read the next verse with great avidity. Housman’s simplicity of style will not appeal to English Literature critics and lecturers, but I welcome a writer who has a more democratic and accessible appeal.

I would rather read Housman’s tritest cliches than any of Pound’s incomprehensible Cantos.

[Leah Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got this from my grandad and it was such a pleasant reading experience.

[julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

but from my grave across my brow
plays no wind of healing now,
and fire and ice within me fight
beneath the suffocating night.

[Dante Mullin Santone · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a treasure

[JMJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

AE Housman’s collected poetry is an impressive work. A Shropshire Lad is a tight collection of stunning lyric poetry when even the poems not named (which tend to be less celebrated) are exemplary. Although I struggled with the collection Last Poems, I found More Poems was not far off the the prodigious talent of the Shropshire Lad collection and incredibly enjoyable when savouring the fine use of language. Housman’s translations of Aeschylus, Soohocles and Euripides as well as his attempts at satirical poetry were an added bonus though I enjoyed the former far more, especially knowing Housman still remains a leading name in this field. Incredibly enjoyable and still poignant.

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see why he is loved, and maybe when i re-read this book I will be in a melancholic state so I can identify with him. Two poems really caught my attention though, and for that I am grateful I read it. And, as he says:
"They say my narrow verse is sad: no wonder,
Its narrow measure spans
Tears of eternity, and sorrow,
Not mine, but Man's.

This is for all ill-treated fellows
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not."

[Francesca Di Lorenzo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unrequited love, death, companionship, a quiet and steady desire for something that has never happened nor will happen in the future mixed with a witty humour. I've grown to like Housman poems, even more than I was expecting.

[Hayley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved the poems in A Shropshire Lad collection but found later poems to be lacking. The first collection was evocative, with imagery of both nature, love and war. The poems also had a lovely rhythm to it. If I was rating A Shropshire Lad poetry collection alone, these would be four stars.

[Ollie Ruis · Rating 3 out of 5]

into my heart an air that kills :((((

definitely not a one hit wonder by any means but the density of some of these poems means they are more to be savoured by olde' traditionalists who sit in countryside beer gardens and cry lots

[Faith Esker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feeling like a macabre yet pastoral reflection on the transience of life in poetic meter? Look no further!

[Lyndi McDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poems from the early 20th Century. Many about death and war.