A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems Read online

  Others, I am not the first,

  Have willed more mischief than they durst:

  If in the breathless night I too

  Shiver now, ’tis nothing new.

  More than I, if truth were told,

  Have stood and sweated hot and cold,

  And through their reins in ice and fire

  Fear contended with desire.

  Agued once like me were they,

  But I like them shall win my way

  Lastly to the bed of mould

  Where there’s neither heat nor cold.

  But from my grave across my brow

  Plays no wind of healing now,

  And fire and ice within me fight

  Beneath the suffocating night.9

  If Housman were an emotion then, he would be longing. The recurrent impulse in these poems, abroad in ‘the friendless world’, in ‘the land of lost content’, is to touch – to touch flesh certainly – but even more simply to engage with another being, to achieve communion or wholeness before the grave’s embrace. These are profoundly lonely poems, among the loneliest in the language.

  Though the later work (he published a second book, Last Poems, in 1922, and then his brother Laurence published More Poems and Additional Poems after his death) lacks the coherence of A Shropshire Lad, the thought often becomes harder and leaner, more fully revealed, the tone more controlled, and the sentence sounds dovetail perfectly in the shape of the stanzas. This is a different Housman; rational, clipped, clear-eyed, and writing poems to make the skin bristle ‘so the razor ceases to act’:

  It is no gift I tender,

  A loan is all I can;

  But do not scorn the lender;

  Man gets no more from man.

  Oh, mortal man may borrow

  What mortal man can lend;

  And ’twill not end to-morrow,

  Though sure enough ’twill end.

  If death and time are stronger

  A love may yet be strong;

  The world will last for longer,

  But this will last for long.10

  NOTES

  1. The Name and Nature of Poetry (Cambridge: CUP, 1933), p. 30. (The full text of the lecture is included at the back of this volume.)

  2. ibid, pp. 49–50.

  3. John Berryman, The Paris Review, Issue 53, Winter 1972.

  4. The Name and Nature of Poetry, pp. 46–7.

  5. ibid, p. 48.

  6. A Shropshire Lad, XXIII.

  7. ibid, XXII.

  8. ibid, VIII.

  9. ibid, XXX.

  10. Additional Poems, IV.

  A SHROPSHIRE LAD

  I

  1887

  From Clee to heaven the beacon burns,

  The shires have seen it plain,

  From north and south the sign returns

  And beacons burn again.

  Look left, look right, the hills are bright,

  The dales are light between,

  Because ’tis fifty years to-night

  That God has saved the Queen.

  Now, when the flame they watch not towers

  About the soil they trod,

  Lads, we’ll remember friends of ours

  Who shared the work with God.

  To skies that knit their heartstrings right,

  To fields that bred them brave,

  The saviours come not home to-night:

  Themselves they could not save.

  It dawns in Asia, tombstones show

  And Shropshire names are read;

  And the Nile spills his overflow

  Beside the Severn’s dead.

  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.

  ‘God save the Queen’ we living sing,

  From height to height ’tis heard;

  And with the rest your voices ring,

  Lads of the Fifty-third.

  Oh, God will save her, fear you not:

  Be you the men you’ve been,

  Get you the sons your fathers got,

  And God will save the Queen.

  II

  Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

  Is hung with bloom along the bough,

  And stands about the woodland ride

  Wearing white for Eastertide.

  Now, of my threescore years and ten,

  Twenty will not come again,

  And take from seventy springs a score,

  It only leaves me fifty more.

  And since to look at things in bloom

  Fifty springs are little room,

  About the woodlands I will go

  To see the cherry hung with snow.

  III

  The Recruit

  Leave your home behind, lad,

  And reach your friends your hand,

  And go, and luck go with you

  While Ludlow tower shall stand.

  Oh, come you home of Sunday

  When Ludlow streets are still

  And Ludlow bells are calling

  To farm and lane and mill,

  Or come you home of Monday

  When Ludlow market hums

  And Ludlow chimes are playing

  ‘The conquering hero comes,’

  Come you home a hero,

  Or come not home at all,

  The lads you leave will mind you

  Till Ludlow tower shall fall.

  And you will list the bugle

  That blows in lands of morn,

  And make the foes of England

  Be sorry you were born.

  And you till trump of doomsday

  On lands of morn may lie,

  And make the hearts of comrades

  Be heavy where you die.

  Leave your home behind you,

  Your friends by field and town:

  Oh, town and field will mind you

  Till Ludlow tower is down.

  IV

  Reveille

  Wake: the silver dusk returning

  Up the beach of darkness brims,

  And the ship of sunrise burning

  Strands upon the eastern rims.

  Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,

  Trampled to the floor it spanned,

  And the tent of night in tatters

  Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

  Up, lad, up, ’tis late for lying:

  Hear the drums of morning play;

  Hark, the empty highways crying

  ‘Who’ll beyond the hills away?’

  Towns and countries woo together,

  Forelands beacon, belfries call;

  Never lad that trod on leather

  Lived to feast his heart with all.

  Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber

  Sunlit pallets never thrive;

  Morns abed and daylight slumber

  Were not meant for man alive.

  Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;

  Breath’s a ware that will not keep.

  Up, lad: when the journey’s over

  There’ll be time enough to sleep.

  V

  Oh see how thick the goldcup flowers

  Are lying in field and lane,

  With dandelions to tell the hours

  That never are told again.

  Oh may I squire you round the meads

  And pick you posies gay?

  – ’Twill do no harm to take my arm.

  ‘You may, young man, you may.’

  Ah, spring was sent for lass and lad,

  ’Tis now the blood runs gold,

  And man and maid had best be glad

  Before the world is old.

  What flowers to-day may flower to-morrow,

  But never as good as new.

  – Suppose I wound my arm right round –

  ‘’Tis true, young man, ’tis true.’

  Some lads there are, ’tis shame to say,

&nbs
p; That only court to thieve,

  And once they bear the bloom away

  ’Tis little enough they leave.

  Then keep your heart for men like me

  And safe from trustless chaps.

  My love is true and all for you.

  ‘Perhaps, young man, perhaps.’

  Oh, look in my eyes then, can you doubt?

  – Why, ’tis a mile from town.

  How green the grass is all about!

  We might as well sit down.

  – Ah, life, what is it but a flower?

  Why must true lovers sigh?

  Be kind, have pity, my own, my pretty, –

  ‘Good-bye, young man, good-bye.’

  VI

  When the lad for longing sighs,

  Mute and dull of cheer and pale,

  If at death’s own door he lies,

  Maiden, you can heal his ail.

  Lovers’ ills are all to buy:

  The wan look, the hollow tone,

  The hung head, the sunken eye,

  You can have them for your own.

  Buy them, buy them: eve and morn

  Lovers’ ills are all to sell.

  Then you can lie down forlorn;

  But the lover will be well.

  VII

  When smoke stood up from Ludlow,

  And mist blew off from Teme,

  And blithe afield to ploughing

  Against the morning beam

  I strode beside my team,

  The blackbird in the coppice

  Looked out to see me stride,

  And hearkened as I whistled

  The trampling team beside,

  And fluted and replied:

  ‘Lie down, lie down, young yeoman;

  What use to rise and rise?

  Rise man a thousand mornings

  Yet down at last he lies,

  And then the man is wise.’

  I heard the tune he sang me,

  And spied his yellow bill;

  I picked a stone and aimed it

  And threw it with a will:

  Then the bird was still.

  Then my soul within me

  Took up the blackbird’s strain,

  And still beside the horses

  Along the dewy lane

  It sang the song again:

  ‘Lie down, lie down, young yeoman;

  The sun moves always west;

  The road one treads to labour

  Will lead one home to rest,

  And that will be the best.’

  VIII

  ‘Farewell to barn and stack and tree,

  Farewell to Severn shore.

  Terence, look your last at me,

  For I come home no more.

  ‘The sun burns on the half-mown hill,

  By now the blood is dried;

  And Maurice amongst the hay lies still

  And my knife is in his side.

  ‘My mother thinks us long away;

  ’Tis time the field were mown.

  She had two sons at rising day,

  To-night she’ll be alone.

  ‘And here’s a bloody hand to shake,

  And oh, man, here’s good-bye;

  We’ll sweat no more on scythe and rake,

  My bloody hands and I.

  ‘I wish you strength to bring you pride,

  And a love to keep you clean,

  And I wish you luck, come Lammastide,

  At racing on the green.

  ‘Long for me the rick will wait,

  And long will wait the fold,

  And long will stand the empty plate,

  And dinner will be cold.’

  IX

  On moonlit heath and lonesome bank

  The sheep beside me graze;

  And yon the gallows used to clank

  Fast by the four cross ways.

  A careless shepherd once would keep

  The flocks by moonlight there,*

  And high amongst the glimmering sheep

  The dead man stood on air.

  They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:

  The whistles blow forlorn,

  And trains all night groan on the rail

  To men that die at morn.

  There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night,

  Or wakes, as may betide,

  A better lad, if things went right,

  Than most that sleep outside.

  And naked to the hangman’s noose

  The morning clocks will ring

  A neck God made for other use

  Than strangling in a string.

  And sharp the link of life will snap,

  And dead on air will stand

  Heels that held up as straight a chap

  As treads upon the land.

  So here I’ll watch the night and wait

  To see the morning shine,

  When he will hear the stroke of eight

  And not the stroke of nine;

  And wish my friend as sound a sleep

  As lads’ I did not know,

  That shepherded the moonlit sheep

  A hundred years ago.

  X

  March

  The Sun at noon to higher air,

  Unharnessing the silver Pair

  That late before his chariot swam,

  Rides on the gold wool of the Ram.

  So braver notes the storm-cock sings

  To start the rusted wheel of things,

  And brutes in field and brutes in pen

  Leap that the world goes round again.

  The boys are up the woods with day

  To fetch the daffodils away,

  And home at noonday from the hills

  They bring no dearth of daffodils.

  Afield for palms the girls repair,

  And sure enough the palms are there,

  And each will find by hedge or pond

  Her waving silver-tufted wand.

  In farm and field through all the shire

  The eye beholds the heart’s desire;

  Ah, let not only mine be vain,

  For lovers should be loved again.

  XI

  On your midnight pallet lying,

  Listen, and undo the door:

  Lads that waste the light in sighing

  In the dark should sigh no more;

  Night should ease a lover’s sorrow;

  Therefore, since I go to-morrow,

  Pity me before.

  In the land to which I travel,

  The far dwelling, let me say –

  Once, if here the couch is gravel,

  In a kinder bed I lay,

  And the breast the darnel smothers

  Rested once upon another’s

  When it was not clay.

  XII

  When I watch the living meet,

  And the moving pageant file

  Warm and breathing through the street

  Where I lodge a little while,

  If the heats of hate and lust

  In the house of flesh are strong,

  Let me mind the house of dust

  Where my sojourn shall be long.

  In the nation that is not

  Nothing stands that stood before;

  There revenges are forgot,

  And the hater hates no more;

  Lovers lying two and two

  Ask not whom they sleep beside,

  And the bridegroom all night through

  Never turns him to the bride.

  XIII

  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.

  XIV

  There pass the careless people

  That call their souls their own:

  Here by the road I loiter,

  How idle and alone.

  Ah, past the plunge of plummet,

  In seas I cannot sound,

  My heart and soul and senses,

  World without end, are drowned.

  His folly has not fellow

  Beneath the blue of day

  That gives to man or woman

  His heart and soul away.

  There flowers no balm to sain him

  From east of earth to west

  That’s lost for everlasting

  The heart out of his breast.

  Here by the labouring highway

  With empty hands I stroll:

  Sea-deep, till doomsday morning,

  Lie lost my heart and soul.

  XV

  Look not in my eyes, for fear

  They mirror true the sight I see,

  And there you find your face too clear

  And love it and be lost like me.

  One the long nights through must lie

  Spent in star-defeated sighs,

  But why should you as well as I

  Perish? gaze not in my eyes.

  A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,

  One that many loved in vain,

  Looked into a forest well

  And never looked away again.

  There, when the turf in springtime flowers,

  With downward eye and gazes sad,

  Stands amid the glancing showers

  A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.

  XVI

  It nods and curtseys and recovers

  When the wind blows above,