A Shropshire Lad E-Book

A.E. Housman

• Herausgeber: Classic Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

A Shropshire Lad is a collection of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman. Some of the better-known poems in the book are "To an Athlete Dying Young", "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now", "The Lent Lily" and "When I Was One-and-Twenty".The collection was published in 1896. Housman originally titled the book The Poems of Terence Hearsay, referring to a character there, but changed the title at the suggestion of his publisher.A Shropshire Lad was first published in 1896 at Housman's own expense after several publishers had turned it down. His colleagues and students were surprised by the emotional depth and vulnerability it revealed in an apparently distant and self-contained man. At first the book sold slowly, but during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), Housman's nostalgic description of rural life and young men's early deaths struck a chord with English readers and the book became a best-seller. Its popularity increased during World War I. Arthur Somervell and other composers were inspired by the folksong-like simplicity of the poems, and the most famous musical settings are by George Butterworth (Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad and Bredon Hill and Other Songs) and Ralph Vaughan Williams (On Wenlock Edge), with others by Ivor Gurney, John Ireland and Ernest John Moeran.Housman was surprised by the success of A Shropshire Lad, thinking that its deep pessimism and obsession with death, without the consolations of religion, would not appeal to a Victorian audience. The poems are set in a half-imaginary pastoral Shropshire, "the land of lost content", and Housman wrote most of them before visiting the county. He described the transience of love and youth in simple, unadorned language that many critics of the time thought old-fashioned. Housman himself acknowledged the influence of the songs of William Shakespeare, the Scottish Border ballads and Heinrich Heine, but specifically denied any influence of Greek and Latin classics in his poetry.

Leseprobe

A SHROPSHIRE LAD

..................

A. E. Housman

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A SHROPSHIRE LAD

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

XXXII.

XXXIII.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

XXXVII.

XXXVIII.

XXXIX.

XL.

XLI.

XLII.

XLIII.

XLIV.

XLV.

XLVI.

XLVII.

XLVIII.

XLIX.

L.

LI.

LII.

LIII.

LIV.

LV.

LVI.

LVII.

LVIII.

LIX.

LX.

LXI.

LXII.

LXIII.

INTRODUCTION

..................

THE 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. There is, too, in Mr. Housman’s poems, the singularly Grecian Quality of a clean and fragrant mental and emotional temper, vibrating equally whether the theme dealt with is ruin or defeat, or some great tragic crisis of spirit, or with moods and ardours of pure enjoyment and simplicities of feeling. Scarcely has any modern book of poems shown so sure a touch of genius in this respect: the magic, in a continuous glow saturating the substance of every picture and motive with its own peculiar essence.

What has been called the “cynical bitterness” of Mr. Housman’s poems, is really nothing more than his ability to etch in sharp tones the actualities of experience. The poet himself is never cynical; his joyousness is all too apparent in the very manner and intensity of expression. The “lads” of Ludlow are so human to him, the hawthorn and broom on the Severn shores are so fragrant with associations, he cannot help but compose under a kind of imaginative wizardry of exultation, even when the immediate subject is grim or grotesque. In many of these brief, tense poems the reader confronts a mask, as it were, with appalling and distorted lineaments; but behind it the poet smiles, perhaps sardonically, but smiles nevertheless. In the real countenance there are no tears or grievances, but a quizzical, humorous expression which shows, when one has torn the subterfuge away, that here is a spirit whom life may menace with its contradictions and fatalities, but never dupe with its circumstance and mystery.

All this quite points to, and partly explains, the charm of the poems in A Shropshire Lad . The fastidious care with which each poem is built out of the simplest of technical elements, the precise tone and color of language employed to articulate impulse and mood, and the reproduction of objective substances for a clear visualization of character and scene, all tend by a sure and unfaltering composition, to present a lyric art unique in English poetry of the last twenty-five years.

I dare say I have scarcely touched upon the secret of Mr. Housman’s book. For some it may radiate from the Shropshire life he so finely etches; for others, in the vivid artistic simplicity and unity of values, through which Shropshire lads and landscapes are presented. It must be, however, in the miraculous fusing of the two. Whatever that secret is, the charm of it never fails after all these years to keep the poems preserved with a freshness and vitality, which are the qualities of enduring genius.

WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

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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,

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 tramping team beside,

And fluted and replied:

“Lie down, lie down, young yeoman;

What use to rise and rise?