A Shropshire LadThe 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 which makes the spectacle of life parade its dark and painful, its ironic and cynical 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, impresses 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. |
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A.E. HOUSMAN aspen heaves blow blue remembered hills breath I tarry Bredon BREDON HILL carried half-way home chap the belly-ache Clun Clunbury Clunton dead endless eve and morn fields flower grave hang heart heaves Its rainy-sounding hill of summer hollow fires burn hop-yards meant Housman's poetry HUGHLEY STEEPLE ISLE OF PORTLAND king when healths land left my necktie lies long look lovers Ludlow tower many-venomed earth muck I've lain never night overhead the aspen Piers Browne pleasant till tis poems poet Pretty friendship tis rainy-sounding silver leaves rate you drink rhyme Your friends seas are smooth shire Shropshire hill Shropshire Lad sigh sleep soul standing hill star-filled seas stared as white's stood Teme There's brisker pipes think With poisoned tis to rhyme Tis true To-day town tread tunes as killed twill Wenlock Edge white's their shirt wind wind's twelve quarters woodland