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A. E. Housman

The English poet and classical scholar Alfred Edward Housman (1859 – 1936) is popularly known as A. E. Housman. He is most famous for his cycle of poems known as A Shropshire Lad. Those poems were very popular with late Victorian and Edwardian audiences. They have a wistful and lyrical quality that made them emblematic of the lives of young men and woman living in the English countryside, in general and of the Shropshire countryside in particular. The poems did not shy away from the disapointments of that life. Cambridge-educated Latin scholar and poet, A.E. Housman believed in the emotional power of poetry, that it should “begin with a sensation in the pit of the stomach.”
Housman is a footnote in my literary world as well. I adore Flannery O’Connor’s short stories about smart people behaving stupidly and I am rather obsessed with The Partridge Festival. It is a story that I have read more often than I should admit publicly! In that story, one of the misguided protagonists bring three books as a gift for someone they are to meet at an insane asylum. A book of Housman’s poetry is one of the three books.

Poems

  • A Shropshire Lad – I – 1887
  • A Shropshire Lad – III – The Recruit
  • A Shropshire Lad – II – Loveliest of Trees
  • A Shropshire Lad – IV – Reveille
  • A Shropshire Lad – IX
  • A Shropshire Lad – L
  • A Shropshire Lad – LI
  • A Shropshire Lad – LII
  • A Shropshire Lad – LIII – The True Lover
  • A Shropshire Lad – LIV
  • A Shropshire Lad – LIX – The Isle Of Portland
  • A Shropshire Lad – LV
  • A Shropshire Lad – LVII
  • A Shropshire Lad – LVIII
  • A Shropshire Lad – LVI – The Day Of Battle
  • A Shropshire Lad – LX
  • A Shropshire Lad – LXI – Hughley Steeple
  • A Shropshire Lad – LXII
  • A Shropshire Lad – LXIII
  • A Shropshire Lad – V
  • A Shropshire Lad – VI
  • A Shropshire Lad – VII
  • A Shropshire Lad – VIII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XI
  • A Shropshire Lad – XII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XIII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XIV
  • A Shropshire Lad – XIX – To An Athlete Dying Young
  • A Shropshire Lad – XL
  • A Shropshire Lad – XLI
  • A Shropshire Lad – XLIII – The Immortal Part
  • A Shropshire Lad – XLII – The Merry Guide
  • A Shropshire Lad – XLIV
  • A Shropshire Lad – XLIX
  • A Shropshire Lad – XLV
  • A Shropshire Lad – XLVI
  • A Shropshire Lad – XLVIII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XLVII – The Carpenters Son
  • A Shropshire Lad – X – MARCH
  • A Shropshire Lad – XV
  • A Shropshire Lad – XVI
  • A Shropshire Lad – XVII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XVIII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XX
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXI – Bredon Hill
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXIII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXIV
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXIX – The Lent Lily
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXV
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXVI
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXVII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXVIII – The Welsh Marches
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXX
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXXI
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXXII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXXIII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXXIV – The New Mistress
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXXIX
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXXV
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXXVI
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXXVII
  • A Shropshire Lad – XXXVIII
  • As I gird on for fighting
  • Astronomy
  • Could man be drunk for ever
  • Eight O’clock
  • Epitaph On An Army Of Mercenaries
  • Epithalamium
  • Fancy’s Knell
  • Grenadier
  • Hell’s Gate
  • Here dead lie we
  • Her strong enchantments failing
  • Illic Jacet
  • In Midnights of November
  • In the morning, in the morning
  • In valleys green and still
  • Lancer
  • Now dreary dawns the eastern light
  • Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough
  • Revolution
  • September 1922
  • Sinner’s Rue
  • Soldier from the wars returning
  • Spring Morning
  • Tell me not here, it needs not saying
  • The chestnut casts his flambeaux
  • The Culprit
  • The Deserter
  • The fairies break their dances
  • The First Of May
  • The half-moon westers low, my love
  • The laws of God, the laws of man
  • The night is freezing fast
  • The Oracles
  • The rain
  • The sigh that heaves the grasses
  • The sloe was lost in flower
  • The West
  • Wake Not For The World-Heard Thunder
  • When first my way to fair I took
  • When I would muse in boyhood
  • When summer’s end is nighing
  • When the eye of day is shut
  • Yonder see the morning blink