Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
is hung with bloom along the bough,
and stands about the woodland ride
wearing white for Eastertide.
Poem II.
Housman (1859-1936), the elder brother of Laurence Housman, the playwright and artist, wrote very little poetry. Then, in 1895, aged 36, he had a sudden burst of creative energy. This book is the result. It's full of the great themes of life and death, of war and peace. It appears to be very simple, almost like primitive poetry, but on closer inspection Housman's work weaves together Classical themes, archaic language, and metres taken from old country balladry. The poems have a slow, yet relentless rhythm; they touch on most of the major themes of life. Rustic and earthy, homespun yet elegant, they create a vista that is both wonderfully attractive and unutterably sad. Shropshire, for Housman, becomes a landscape of the mind, an idealised country haven far from the arid streets of London where
"...till they drop they needs must still
Look at you and wish you ill." (Poem XLI)
Housman was a native of Worcestershire, not of Shropshire. Nevertheless, in the poems he uses the place names and history of Shropshire to conjure up the hilarity of Ludlow Fair, the wind on Bredon Hill, the swift-flowing Teme and the stately Severn. The Shropshire of Housman's mind is a place where young lads fall in love, then go away to fight Victoria's wars. It's a place where lovers lie down together, but death soon steals them. In a profusion of narrative and evocative language, Housman creates a place that does not change, where the Wrekin hill still looks down, impassivly on the emotions of man, where the vane on Hughley steeple still stands bright against the sky.
It's hard to choose a favorite, but if I have to, I'll go for
Poem XIX - To An Artist Dying Young.
The time you won your town the race
We 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 away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.
Housman’s imagery is stark in its intensity: once the hero was carried high in victory; now he is carried shoulder-high, in a coffin. Whereas once his achievements were lauded by the living, now he can only share his glory with the shades. But there’s still more to the poem. The warning to a man, not to let his name die before he does, and the image of the garland, briefer than a girl’s, remain after the narrative has ceased. Therein lies Housman's true genius. He is not just recreating an antique land of the imagination, he is populating it with people just like us, people for whom the themes of love and death are just as pertinent. We, too, know the pain of loss, the nostalgia for things past.
In one poem, XLVII 'The Carpenter's Son,' Housman speaks of Christ. In his words, I do not sense the devotion of one who has known the soul-satisfying embrace of saving faith. His words are respectful, yet a little cold. In the fifth verse, Christ speaks:
Here hang I, and right and left
Two poor fellows hang for theft:
All the same’s the luck we prove,
Though the midmost hangs for love.
Of course, Housman is right, Christ dies for love, yet in the poem it is a strangely ineffectual love. There is nothing of salvation. We feel sorry for the crucified One. Christ's only advice, repeated twice is merely "Live, lads, and I will die."
I think this could be the clue to the whole work. Housman longs for another country, a fairer land, so he invents Shropshire, a landscape of the mind. He is actually searching for heaven, for the place where he will enjoy peace with God, reconciled with his Maker through the atoning sacrifice of Christ.
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
Poem XL
We wade through the melancholy and the nostalgia. We weep with him at the sight of a loved one leaving whom he shall meet no more. His loneliness and sense of loss are, at times painfully intense. He speaks for us, restless and homesick, until we find our rest in Him, until we come home to God.
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