A Shropshire Lad [Paperback]

A. E. Housman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2004

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing (June 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1419103318
• ISBN-13: 978-1419103315
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,405,625 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great poet who offers perfect gems in slender volumes, September 17, 2007

By 

L. E. Cantrell (Vancouver, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Shropshire Lad (Paperback)

Recently, I was appalled to discover that the top one hundred hits under the heading "A. E. Housman" do not disclose a single volume of his collected poetry to be in print, save for a ridiculously overpriced and bloated scholarly edition of interest only to plodding, dry-as-dust, doctoral candidates. This is a disgraceful state for one of the great poets of the turn of the Twentieth Century, one who in his miniaturist way was a peer of Elliott and Pound.

Alfred Edward Housman was born in 1859. At Oxford, he was universally regarded as a high-flyer, an odds-on favorite to win a "First in Greats." All went well until his final term in 1881, when he crashed and burned during a disastrous final examination. Not only did he fail to get his "First," he managed to get his degree only after months of delay, and that was a lowly, utterly undistinguished "pass".

Housman was, to say the least, not loquacious about his life. What seems to have happened was that he fell hopelessly, eternally, absurdly, romantically in love with one of his roommates, a stolidly athletic young man named Moses Jackson. Jackson, alas for Housman's hopes, proved to be inconveniently and irredeemably straight. Not long before the final examinations, Housman apparently declared his passion for Jackson, who seems politely, even kindly to have said something on the order of "No, thanks." In cricket terms, Housman was "hit for six" and he never recovered to the day he died.

Housman's expectations of an academic career went down in flames along with his "First." He slunk away from Oxford to work in the Patent Office, where--surprise, surprise--Jackson was also working, although the latter drew a higher salary because of his better degree. For ten years Housman toiled in these unfertile fields while on the side he contributed learned articles on classical subjects to the leading scholarly journals.

Such was the brilliance of the man that in 1892 he was unprecedentedly plucked directly from the academic sterility of the Patent Office to become Professor of Latin at London University College. In 1911, he moved up a very large notch to become a professor at Cambridge, a very unusual thing, then, for an Oxford man. He remained at Cambridge, recognized as one of the jewels in the University's crown, until he died.

Housman remained quietly attached to Jackson, even through Jackson's marriage and after he moved thousands of miles away to live in Vancouver, British Columbia (where I am writing this). Housman became the godfather for one of Jackson's children. When Jackson was on his deathbed in 1923, Housman rushed to him a copy of his second book of poetry, "Final Poems," so that Jackson might read it in his last hours. Jackson, of course, was the unnamed subject of some of the poems in that book, just as he had been in Housman's first, "A Shropshire Lad."

After Housman's death in 1936, his younger brother, the novelist Laurence Housman, rummaged through his papers and from them published the third slender volume of Housman' poetry, "More Poems."

Housman was not prolific. He seems to have worked in short, intense spurts of creativity no more than three or four times in his life. He devoted far more time and effort to his life-long magnum opus, a multi-volume critical edition and study of Manilius, a late Roman poet of truly breathtaking obscurity, dullness and unimportance. Housman appears to have had the very last word on Manilius, largely because it is hard to conceive that anyone else would care enough to add another. Housman's lasting fame rests on just three slender volumes of poetry, respectively 96, 71 and 66 pages in length.

Housman is the bard of tiny, perfect, miniatures. He is always formal in structure. One critic quite acutely called him the last Roman poet. There are no sprawling epics in him, hardly any smiling pastorals. He writes in a fit of sustained and remarkably entertaining depression, a poetic equivalent of film noir.

Here is Housman the Roman, writing of Britain's standing army of regular soldiers, all but destroyed in 1914:

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
("Last Poems," XXXVII)

Here is Housman in gaudily Romantic despair:

The Queen of air and darkness
Begins to shrill and cry,
"O young man, O my slayer,
To-morrow you shall die."

O Queen of air and darkness,
I think `tis truth you say,
And I shall die to-morrow;
But you will die today.
("Last Poems," III)

And here is Housman in his first and most famous volume of poetry, "A Shropshire Lad":

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.
("A Shropshire Lad," XIII)

"A Shropshire Lad" was first published in 1896. "When I was one-and-twenty" was written in January 1895, at which time Housman was thirty-five and a professor of Latin. When Housman was twenty-one, though, he was an undergraduate at Oxford and sharing space with Moses Jackson. Despite the warnings he must have heard, he gave his heart away, no use to talk to him. When he was two-and-twenty, he paid with sighs a plenty and examination's rue, and oh, `twas true, `twas true.

Housman was a great poet in a small package. Grab anything of his that you come across. He'll make it worth your while.

Full five stars / For many a rose-lipt maiden / And many a lightfoot lad.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Housman's Cycle Of Life...Ageless, Timeless, April 27, 2006

By 

L. Shirley "Laurie's Boomer Views" (Huntington Beach,CA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Shropshire Lad (Paperback)

Without getting too analytical of the poetry itself or the meaning of Housman's works, I will say that I throughly enjoy "A Shropshire Lad" many times over. Although Housman's words at times may seem a bit harsh or sometimes even depressing,he seems to speak from the heart and wisely about the cycle of life. The never ending scheme of things.The seasons and the earth changing year by year. Young men falling in love, going off to war, coming home wounded, dead, or finding their loves no longer want them. It brings to mind for me, the Peter, Paul and Mary song, "Where Have All The Flowers Gone".

Although these words were first published well over 100 years ago, I found they are still most meaningful in today's world, as the cycle repeats. Many of the lines in this book I found to still be quoted today. For example in poem LVI-"The Day of Battle", he ponders this:

"Comrade, if to turn and fly
Made a soldier never die,
Fly I would, for who would not?
Tis sure no pleasure to be shot

But since the man that runs away
Lives to die another day,
And cowards' funerals, when they come,
Are not wept so well at home,........."

All sixty-three original poems of "A Shropshire Lad" including XIX-"To An Athlete Dying Young"(which you've heard if you have seen the film "Out of Africa") are contained here. A wonderful book of poetry that knows no age. One that may be read often and aloud.

Beautifully written,Enjoy...Laurie