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I'm glad I finally read it. Thank you to M.E. Kerr (THE SON OF SOMEONE FAMOUS) and Blossom Elfman (A HOUSE FOR JONNIE O.) for the consciousness-raising (mentioning this in their books).
Read this long ago - but I am not sure if it was just selected poems. The Dover issue was wonderful and I will read it again; the poems are simple and true - beautiful and haunting - highest recommendation.
A reread. Love Housman. His poems are wistful, longing, evocative of lost youth and natures eternal cycles.
TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNGThe time you won your town the raceWe chaired you through the market-place;Man and boy stood cheering by,And home we brought you shoulder-high.To-day, the road all runners come,Shoulder-high we bring you home,And set you at your threshold down,Townsman of a stiller town.Smart lad, to slip betimes awayFrom fields where glory does not stayAnd early though the laurel growsIt withers quicker than the rose.Eyes the shady night has shutCannot see the record cut,And silence s
My expectations for this poem cycle were confounded. I'd got it into my head that A Shropshire Lad was a rural idyll about bucolic farm boys, milk maids and nostalgic reveries about "blue remembered hills". As there is practically none of that ("blue remembered hills" notwithstanding), I'd obviously constructed this false image myself based on nothing more than the title of the collection.Now, that's a bit of a shame as I was in the mood for (had a need for, in fact) a bit of idylic escapism to
I have come across references to A Shropshire Lad for years, so when I found a copy at my favorite UBS, I didn’t hesitate. My (married) surname being Shropshire and having visited Shropshire County in England last year are other reasons I was drawn to it.I understand Housman was not from Shropshire, but Worcestershire, and that most of the scenic descriptions were from his imagination and some quite erroneous. Nevertheless, this collection of poems quickly became popular and remained so for many...
8/2012 I come to Housman when I'm hollow, when I'm lost, when I'm confused. I come here when I need to come here, and he takes me in, he comforts me with snark, with acute observation, with hilarity and bottomless woe. There's nobody, nobody at all like Housman. I have entire swaths of this by heart, and generally read a poem or two at need. Today I read it cover to cover and was, once again, entirely blown away. 2010: What's to say of Housman? His words are like strange wine that changes one ut...
Sixty-one simple poems mostly about our mortality, what lasts after us, or just to be forgotten. Many on themes of soldiers going from home, of places beloved along the Severn River, never to return to or to lay under long. Here’s the last closing gem.LXII hoed and trenched and weeded,And took the flowers to fair:I brought them home unheeded;The hue was not the wear.So up and down I sow themFor lads like me to find,When I shall lie below them,A dead man out of mind.Some seeds the birds devour, A...
I was first introduced to the exquisite poetry of A.E. Housman in my grade ten English class (where we covered British literature from Beowulf to the early 20th century, and oh, how I did enjoy that class). But while I started to appreciate Housman's poetry then, I really only truly began to passionately love love love his poetry when I listened to George Butterworth's lovely and evocative song-cycle rendition of A Shropshire Lad and realisesd that Housman's poems are not just meant to be read,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5720/5... Picked this up today because I am grieving Endeavour Morse who used to quote from this collection often through the course of his career. Sixty-three tiny poems urging us to seize the day, not let life just run out without giving all.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
Be forewarned: this review is less about this book than maybe any review on this site has EVER not been about a book (exaggeration is my thing, as of late.) I read this short collection of poems, and I wanted to really turn your heads around in circles with my insightful analysis of its varying components. To tell you all about who Housman was, what he intended to tell you, how/why you should read these poems, and maybe even how you should feel about them. Straight-up-deep-dopeshit. This I canno...
The much-anthologized lyrics everyone remembers from this slim volume are memorable for their delicate music and Attic restraint, but many of the sixty-three poems contained herein are pretty forgettable; reiterating the familiar themes of youthful beauty and early death without deepening or enriching them, they often veer dangerously close to self-parody. Still . . . "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now," "To an Athlete Dying Young," "Bredon Hill," "With rue may heart is laden," "Is my team plou...
I enjoyed this much more on a reread – the language is lyrical in a great way and the rhythm is lovely. An interesting exploration of growing up, death and rural life, if a little sentimental at times.
I think I never want to seeAnother stanza by A.E.I pity now the friends of Terence,And eke his siblings, pets and parents.For oh, good Lord the verse he made--Too grim and too much in the shade:The doomstruck lad, the Severn missed,The Ludlow fair where he got pissed,The London blues, the snow-hung orchard,Young life cut short in syntax tortured,And favorite of all his themes,The Shropshire schoolboy's martial dreams.Brave verse to stop a soldier shirkingBy one whose work was patent-clerking."St...
And malt does more than Milton canTo justify God’s ways to man.Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drinkFor fellows whom it hurts to think:Look into the pewter potTo see the world as the world’s not.
Nice poetry, though not my favourite kind. 'Tis a shame I didn't read it when I lived in Clungunford, Shropshire (mentioned in this work). It is a very short read, and can be done in one sitting.
Once I got through the rather dismal first 15 or 20 poems, I quite enjoyed this classic collection. From dreary images of murders, hangings, and suicides, there was a gradual shift to a more lighthearted - if somewhat cynical - tone which was underscored by the rhythmic lilt of the verse.I began to read these poems in an effort to locate the one poem which purportedly inspired the title of the award-winning novel Earth and High Heaven (by Canadian author Gwethalyn Graham). The exact phrase is fo...
As a lad I was very fond of one of Housman's poems, Reveille, because it was upbeat and inspirational: " Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were not meant for man alive.So when I received my copy of the Folio edition of this book, I expected more of the same. Boy, was I right out to lunch! What utter doom and gloom! Death is present in real or allegorical form in just about every poem. I had never read anything like it from the pen of...
Housman's poetry appeals to me because of its simple rootedness. Unlike, say, Eliot, whose life was defined by a defection from his home country and culture (Rightly so, in my opinion) to another, more ancient civilization is revealed in his poesy by his anarchic modernism, Housman is elegant in his descriptions of his youthful habitat. His poems deal with everything from love, desire, and work, to the self-sacrifice of the elderly, war, hangings, and the dissolution of his own community. While