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National Poetry Month. Materials for Teachers Teach This Poem. Poems for Kids. Poetry for Teens. Lesson Plans. Resources for Teachers. Academy of American Poets. American Poets Magazine. Poems Find and share the perfect poems. A Shropshire Lad, From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again. To skies that knit their heartstrings right, To fields that bred them brave, The saviours come not home to-night: A Shropshire Lad they could not save. We pledge in peace by farm and town The Queen they served in war, And fire the beacons up and down The land they perished for. This poem is in the public domain. Housman Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: My feet upon the moonlit dust Pursue the ceaseless way. But ere the circle homeward hies Far, far must it A Shropshire Lad White in the moon the long road lies That leads A Shropshire Lad from my love. And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair. Oh a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade; But A Shropshire Lad pulled the beggar's hat off for the world to see and stare, And they're haling him to justice for the colour of his hair. Now 'tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat, A Shropshire Lad between his spells of labour in the time he has to spare He can curse the God that made him for the colour of his hair. Academy of American Poets Educator Newsletter. Teach This Poem. Follow Us. Find Poets. Poetry Near You. Jobs for Poets. Read Stanza. Privacy Policy. Press Center. The Walt Whitman Award. James Laughlin Award. Ambroggio Prize. Dear Poet Project. A Shropshire Lad - Wikipedia

The method of the poems in A Shropshire Lad illustrates better than any theory how poetry may assume the attire of reality, and yet in speech of the simplest, become in spirit the sheer quality of loveliness. For, in these unobtrusive pages, there is nothing shunned A Shropshire Lad makes the spectacle of life parade its dark and A Shropshire Lad, its ironic and A Shropshire Lad burdens, as well as those images with happy and exquisite aspects. With a broader and deeper background of experience and environment, which by some divine special privilege belongs to the poetic imagination, it is easier to set apart and contrast these opposing words and sympathies in a poet; but here we find them evoked in a restricted locale- an English county-where the rich, cool tranquil landscape gives a solid texture to the human show. What, I think, A Shropshire Lad one, thrills, like ecstatic, half-smothered strains of music, floating from unperceived instruments, in Mr. Housman's poems, is the encounter his spirit constantly endures with life. It is, this encounter, what you feel in the Greeks, and as in the Greeks, it is a spiritual waging of miraculous forces. There is, too, in Mr. Housman's poems, the singularly Grecian Quality of a clean and fragrant mental A Shropshire Lad emotional temper, A Shropshire Lad equally whether the theme dealt with is ruin or defeat, or some great tragic crisis of spirit, or with moods and ardours of pure enjoyment and simplicities of feeling. Scarcely has any modern book of poems shown so A Shropshire Lad a touch of genius in this respect: A Shropshire Lad magic, in a continuous glow saturating the substance of every picture and motive with its own peculiar essence. What has been A Shropshire Lad the A Shropshire Lad bitterness" of Mr. Housman's poems, is really nothing more than his ability to etch in sharp tones the actualities of experience. The poet himself is never A Shropshire Lad his joyousness is all too apparent in the very manner and intensity of expression. The "lads" of Ludlow are so human to him, the hawthorn and broom on the Severn shores are so fragrant with associations, he cannot help but compose under a kind of imaginative wizardry of exultation, even when the immediate subject is grim or grotesque. In many of these brief, tense poems the reader confronts a mask, as it were, with appalling and distorted lineaments; but behind it the poet smiles, perhaps sardonically, but smiles nevertheless. In the real countenance there are no tears or grievances, but a quizzical, humorous expression which shows, when one has torn the subterfuge away, that here is a spirit whom life may menace with its contradictions and fatalities, but never A Shropshire Lad with its circumstance and mystery. All this quite points to, and partly explains, the charm of the poems in A Shropshire Lad. The fastidious care with which each poem is built out of the simplest of technical elements, the precise tone and color of language employed to articulate impulse and mood, and the reproduction of objective substances for a clear visualization of character and scene, all tend by a sure and unfaltering composition, to present a lyric art unique in English poetry of the last twenty-five years. I dare say I have scarcely touched upon the secret of Mr. Housman's book. For some it may radiate from the Shropshire life he so finely etches; for others, in the vivid artistic simplicity and unity of values, through which Shropshire lads and landscapes are presented. It must be, however, in the miraculous fusing of the two. Whatever that secret is, the charm of it never fails after all these years to keep the poems preserved with a freshness and vitality, which are the qualities of enduring genius. A Shropshire Lad | poetry by Housman | Britannica

Selling slowly A Shropshire Lad first, it then rapidly grew in popularity, particularly among young readers. Composers began setting the poems to music less than ten years after their first appearance, and many parodists have satirised Housman's themes and poetic style. Housman is said originally to have titled his book The Poems of Terence Hearsayreferring to a character there, but changed the title to A Shropshire Lad at the suggestion of a colleague in the British Museum. A friend of his remembered otherwise, however, and claimed that Housman's choice of title was always the latter. The book was published A Shropshire Lad following year, partly at the author's expense, after it had already been rejected by one publisher. At first the book sold slowly; the initial printing of copies, some of which were sent to the United States, did not clear until Sales revived during the Second Boer War —due in part to the prominence of military themes and of dying young. Its popularity increased thereafter, especially during World War Iwhen the book accompanied many young men A Shropshire Lad the trenches. But it also benefited from the accessibility that Housman encouraged himself. Initially he declined royalty paymentsso as to keep the price down, and also encouraged A Shropshire Lad, cheap pocket and even waistcoat pocket editions. By sales were at an annual average of 13, copies, and by its fiftieth anniversary there had been approaching a hundred UK and US editions. Housman later repeated the claim made in the final poem of the sequence LXIII to have had a young male readership in mind. Auden and his generation "no other poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent"; and George Orwell remembered that, among his generation at Eton College in the wake of World War 1, "these were the poems which I and my contemporaries used to recite to ourselves, over and over, in a kind of ecstasy". Though the names there A Shropshire Lad be found on the map, their topographical details are admittedly not factual. Indeed, Housman confessed in his letter to Pollett that "I know Ludlow and Wenlockbut my topographical details — Hughley, Abdon under Clee — are sometimes quite wrong". He did, however, have one source to guide him, echoes from which are to be found in the poems. This was Murray's Handbook for Shropshire, Cheshire and Lancashire originally published inin which is to be found the jingle with which poem L opens. Murray also mentions that the last fair of the year at Church Stretton is called 'Dead Man's Fair', the event with which "In midnights of November" begins. Written about the same time as the others, this poem was held over until it was incorporated in Last Poems In the letter to Pollet already mentioned, Housman pointed out that there was a discontinuity between the Classical scholar who wrote the poems and the "imaginary" Shropshire Lad they portrayed. A Shropshire Lad contains several repeated themes. Not all the poems are in the same voice and there are various kinds of dialogue between the speaker and others, including conversations beyond the grave. The collection begins with an imperial theme by paying tribute to the Shropshire lads who have died as soldiers in the service of The Queen Empressas her golden jubilee is celebrated with a beacon bonfire on Clee Hill I. There is little time for a lad to live and enjoy the spring II. The spring's promise of love and renewal may be false X. The ghost of a lad dead of grief begs the consolation of a last embrace XI. The playing of a game of cricket or football consoles a broken heart XVII. But on this dubious sentiment Edith Sitwell commented acidly, "If he means to say that cricket, and cricket alone, has prevented men from committing suicide, then their continuation on this earth seems hardly worthwhile. Continuing this theme, the athlete who died young was lucky, for A Shropshire Lad did not A Shropshire Lad his renown XIX. The poet exchanges a glance with a marching soldier and wishes him well, thinking they will never cross paths A Shropshire Lad XXII. Seize the daythen, to cultivate friendship XXIV. Man is a chance combination of elements — make A Shropshire Lad most of him while there is time! London is full of cold-hearted men who fear and hate one another, but he will make A Shropshire Lad best of life while he has a living will A Shropshire Lad. These two poems were suggested by a report on the death of a naval cadet in August who had left behind him a letter mentioning these reasons for taking his own life. 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 A Shropshire Lad London has its troubles, so do quiet Clun and Knightonand the only A Shropshire Lad for any of them is the grave L. Though he is in London, his spirit wanders about his home fields LII. From the grave the suicide's ghost visits the beloved LIIIa theme apparently derived from a traditional ballad A Shropshire Lad the unquiet grave type. 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 to face death young rather than put it off out of cowardice LVI. 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. Some mock his melancholy thoughts but he has used them like the poisons sampled by Mithridates A Shropshire Lad will survive to die old LXII. Perhaps these poems are not fashionable, but they survive the poet to please other lads like him LXIII. The strong combination of emotional feeling, lyricism and folk qualities contributed to the popularity of A Shropshire Lad with A Shropshire Lad. Several composers wrote song cycles in which the poems, taken out of their A Shropshire Lad in the collection, contrast with each other or combine in a narrative dialogue. In a few cases they wrote more than one work using this material. The earliest, performed inless than ten years after the collection's first appearance, A Shropshire Lad Arthur Somervell 's Song Cycle from A Shropshire Lad in which ten were set for baritone and piano. During the immediately post-war period, two A Shropshire Lad composers made extensive use of the poems in A Shropshire Lad. Composers outside the UK have also set individual poems by Housman. Baksa b. The first illustrated edition of A Shropshire Lad was published inwith eight county landscapes by William Hyde Wilson Translations of poems from all of Housman's collections into Classical Greek and Latin have been made since he first appeared as an author. Some thirty more appeared between then and The repeated mannerisms, lilting style and generally black humour of Housman's collection have made it an easy target for parody. The first to set the A Shropshire Lad was Housman himself in "Terence, this is stupid stuff" LXII with its humorously voiced criticism of the effect of his writing and the wry justification of his stance in the tale of Mithridates. A poem of three stanzas, it begins with a glum acknowledgement of mortality:. These began, in imitation of the opening of poem L. Max Beerbohm joined in the fun a decade later with six lines beginning. The first of these, beginning. A Shropshire Lad, still alive at twenty-two, A clean upstanding chap like you? But when the mists in autumn On Bredon top are thick, And happy hymns of farmers Go up from fold and rick, The cattle then are sick. Humbert Wolfe 's "A. Housman and a few friends" is almost as often quoted as Kingsmill's first parody. Written inits humour is equally black and critical of Housman's typical themes:. When lads have done with labour In Shropshire, one will cry, "Let's go and kill a neighbour," And t'other answers "Aye! Dorothy Parker returned it to the context of A Shropshire Lad so prevalent in A Shropshire Ladand included it under the title "Cherry White" in her collected poems, Not So Deep as a Well A Shropshire Lad. I never see that prettiest thing— A cherry bough gone white with Spring— But what I think, "How gay t'would be To hang me from a flowering tree. A new context is also found for Housman's celebratory tone as "Loveliest of cheese, the Cheddar now" by Terence Beersay, a pseudonym claimed to conceal "a literary figure of some note" in the preface to an 8-page booklet titled The Shropshire Lag Kingsley Amis too acknowledges that there is more to Housman's writing than the monotonously macabre. His later "A. Flame the westward skies adorning Leaves no like on holt or hill; Sounds of battle joined at morning Wane and wander and are still. Another parodic approach is to deal with the subject of one poem in the style of another. This will only work when both are equally well known, as is the case with Louis Untermeyer 's subversion of heterosexual relations between Shropshire youth in "Georgie, Porgie, pudding and pie fashioned after A. There have been numerous literary references to A Shropshire Ladoften with characters in novels or dramas quoting a few lines or even whole poems. After closure, the nameplate was auctioned in From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Poetry A Shropshire Lad by A. Dewey Decimal. A Shropshire Lad. New York: John Lane Company. HousmanClarendon Presspp. The numerals are those of the poems, in sequence, to which each comment refers. Archived from the original on 2 March Retrieved 1 March London: E. The Norton Book of Light Verse. New York: Norton. Housman's level tones", in A. HousmanLondonp. Categories : poetry books Poetry by A. Housman English poetry collections British poems Shropshire in fiction. Hidden categories: Webarchive template wayback links All articles with dead external links Articles with dead external links from May Articles with permanently dead external links Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata EngvarB from September Use dmy dates from August Books with missing cover Articles that link to Wikisource Articles with LibriVox links. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload A Shropshire Lad. Download as PDF Printable version. Wikimedia Commons.