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A review by bookwomble
A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman
4.0
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 lift my mood. What Housman serves up instead is a series of poems of which the majority deal with death, sometimes by way of poetical allusion (autumnal trees shedding leaves, that sort of thing), thigh often directly stated. War is present in some poems, but mostly death simply stalks the countryside, or the city-bound country boy pining for his home fields. A few of the poems pay with the idea of the dead visiting the living, only to find their sweetheart in the arms of their best friend. These melancholy musings are not without their charm, though not exactly what I had in mind as a tonic (fortunately, Keats's remedy of getting out into nature was available to me). However, Housman goes rather further in a couple of poems, encouraging his 'lad' to die by suicide, and in one poem worthy of Poe, his 'lad' (there must be several of them, and presumably Shropshire must have been rather depopulated of young men if Housman is to be taken literally) actually cuts his own throat while on a date with his girlfriend.
Some of the poems remind me of Khayyám-FitzGerald's preoccupation with mortality and the transience of life, and with the consolations of alcohol. The are some quatrains in Housman's collection but, as far as my amateur reading can tell, no deliberate imitation of the Rubáiyát.
First published in 1896, I wonder whether the late Victorian morbid (from a modern perspective) relationship with death, and their often melodramatic sentimentality feeds into Housman's rather dark vision of life's ephemeral nature. How much was England and the Empire overshadowed by the growing inevitability of the death of the Old Queen? The impending death of the seemingly ever-present and eternal Victoria signalling the decease of a way of life, a break in cultural continuity, the end of days?
Overall, an uneven (but enjoyable) collection, I think, though highly praised by J.R.R. Tolkien, who's probably a better judge than I. I'll read the poems again when I'm in a brighter mood and see whether the poems which aren't about death and shagging your dead mate's girlfriend make more of an impression on me.
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 lift my mood. What Housman serves up instead is a series of poems of which the majority deal with death, sometimes by way of poetical allusion (autumnal trees shedding leaves, that sort of thing), thigh often directly stated. War is present in some poems, but mostly death simply stalks the countryside, or the city-bound country boy pining for his home fields. A few of the poems pay with the idea of the dead visiting the living, only to find their sweetheart in the arms of their best friend. These melancholy musings are not without their charm, though not exactly what I had in mind as a tonic (fortunately, Keats's remedy of getting out into nature was available to me). However, Housman goes rather further in a couple of poems, encouraging his 'lad' to die by suicide, and in one poem worthy of Poe, his 'lad' (there must be several of them, and presumably Shropshire must have been rather depopulated of young men if Housman is to be taken literally) actually cuts his own throat while on a date with his girlfriend.
Some of the poems remind me of Khayyám-FitzGerald's preoccupation with mortality and the transience of life, and with the consolations of alcohol. The are some quatrains in Housman's collection but, as far as my amateur reading can tell, no deliberate imitation of the Rubáiyát.
First published in 1896, I wonder whether the late Victorian morbid (from a modern perspective) relationship with death, and their often melodramatic sentimentality feeds into Housman's rather dark vision of life's ephemeral nature. How much was England and the Empire overshadowed by the growing inevitability of the death of the Old Queen? The impending death of the seemingly ever-present and eternal Victoria signalling the decease of a way of life, a break in cultural continuity, the end of days?
Overall, an uneven (but enjoyable) collection, I think, though highly praised by J.R.R. Tolkien, who's probably a better judge than I. I'll read the poems again when I'm in a brighter mood and see whether the poems which aren't about death and shagging your dead mate's girlfriend make more of an impression on me.