A Shropshire Lad is a cycle of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman. Poetry (ancient Greek: poieo = create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Royal motto: Dieu et mon droit (French: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area  - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population  - Total (2001)  - Density Ranked 1st UK 49,138,831 377/km² Ethnicity... Alfred Edward Housman (March 26, 1859 - April 30, 1936) was an English poet and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. ...

History

A Shropshire Lad was first published in 1896 at Housman's own expense after several publishers had turned it down, much to the surprise of his colleagues and students. At first the book sold slowly, but during the second Boer War, Housman's nostalgic depiction of rural life and young men's early deaths struck a chord with English readers and the book became a bestseller. Later, World War I further increased its popularity. 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 and Ralph Vaughan Williams, with others by Ivor Gurney, John Ireland and Ernest John Moeran. 1896 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Boer guerrillas during the Second Boer War There were two Boer wars, one from December 16, 1880-March 23, 1881 and the second from October 11, 1899-May 31, 1902 both between the British and the settlers of Dutch, French and German origin (called Boers, Afrikaners or Voortrekkers) in South... World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machineguns, and poison gas. ... Insert non-formatted text here 62. ... George Sainton Kaye Butterworth (July 12, 1885 - August 5, 1916) was a British composer best known for his settings of A. E. Housmans poems. ... Ralph Vaughan Williams (October 12, 1872 – August 26, 1958) was an influential British composer. ... Ivor Gurney (August 28, 1890 - December 26, 1937) was an English composer and poet. ... John Ireland ( August 13, 1879 – June 12, 1962) was an English composer. ... Ernest John Moeran (December 31, 1894 - December 1, 1950) was an English composer. ...

Housman was surprised by the success of A Shropshire Lad because it, like all his poetry, is imbued with a deep pessimism and an obsession with death, with no place for the consolations of religion. Set in a half-imaginative pastoral Shropshire, "the land of lost content" (in fact Housman wrote most of the poems before visiting the county), the poems explore the fleetingness of love and decay of youth in a spare, uncomplicated style which many critics of the time found out-of-date as compared to the exuberance of some Romantic poets. 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. Shropshire (abbreviated Salop or Shrops) is a county in the West Midlands region of England, bordering Cheshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, and the Welsh counties of Powys and Clwyd. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (born as Harry Heine December 13, 1797 – February 17, 1856) was one of the most significant German poets. ... Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Classics, particularly within the Western University tradition, when used as a singular noun, means the study of the language, literature, history, art, and other aspects of Greek and Roman culture during the time frame known as classical antiquity. ...

The main theme of A Shropshire Lad is mortality, and so living life to its fullest, since death can strike at any time. For example, number IV, titled "Reveille," urges an unnamed "lad" to stop sleeping in the daylight, for "When the journey's over/There'll be time enough to sleep."

One of Housman's most familiar poems is number XIII from A Shropshire Lad, untitled but often anthologized under a title taken from its first line. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations includes no less than fourteen of its sixteen lines:

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.

Poem XVII, "Is my team ploughing?," is a dialog between a dead youth and a friend who has survived him. The dead youth asks "Is my girl happy/That I thought hard to leave/And is she tired of weeping/As she lies down to eve?" The living replies "Ay, she lies down lightly/She lies not down to weep/Your girl is well contented/Be still, my lad, and sleep." As the reader has begun to suspect, two stanzas later the living man acknowledges "I cheer a dead man's sweetheart/Never ask me whose."

Poem LXII, "Terence, this is stupid stuff," (source) is a dialog in which the poet, asked for "a tune to dance to" instead of his usual "moping melancholy" verse, offers (perhaps ironically) the respite of drunkenness and then pessimism as a way to inure oneself to the pain of existence -- "Malt does more than Milton can/To justify God's ways to man": // Defining irony Irony is a form of speech in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the words used. ... In general usage, alcohol (from Arabic al-khwl الكحول, or al-ghawl الغول) refers almost always to ethanol, also known as grain alcohol, and often to any beverage that contains ethanol (see alcoholic beverage). ... Pessimism, generally, describes a belief that things are bad, and tend to become worse; or that looks to the eventual triumph of evil over good; it contrasts with optimism, the contrary belief in the goodness and betterment of things generally. ...

Therefore, since the world has still

Much good, but much less good than ill,

And while the sun and moon endure

Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,

I'd face it as a wise man would,

And train for ill and not for good.

The uniform style and tone of A Shropshire Lad make it an easy target for parody, as in this example by Humbert Wolfe:

When lads have done with labor

In Shropshire, one will cry

"Let's go and kill a neighbor,"

And t'other answers "Aye!"

So this one kills his cousins,

And that one kills his dad;

And, as they hang by dozens

At Ludlow, lad by lad,

Each of them one-and-twenty,

All of them murderers,

The hangman mutters: "Plenty

Even for Housman's verse."