A Shropshire Lad

Penelope · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:43 am Post subject:

DWill:

DWill · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 6:53 pm Post subject:

Penelope,
Thanks for pointing out my error. It was indeed 50 years of rule.

I am so used to expecting irony when it comes to young men laying down their lives in war--especially for the Queen, especially in a war of which no one may know the point. I think of that Wilfred Owen poem from WW I, "Dulce Et Decorum Est," which puts an entirely different spin on dying for one's country. But thanks for your view, which is that the devotion shown to the Queen/Mother Country is real.

Please don't feel you need to be objective!

DWill

DWill · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 7:10 pm Post subject: Gather ye Rosebuds

Since we are fortunate to have more women than men participating right now, I wondered if you have any reaction to the several "Gather ye rosebud"-type poems in the book.These are as old as the hills, of course.
They are seduction poems in which the guy usually convinces the girl to take pity on him and give in to sex. No. 5 is an exception, where the girl gives him the heave-ho, but the idea is the same. I realize I'm taking the discussion back to sex, but I suppose everything winds up there, anyway. Do you get bugged by these poems? I was going to ask why there don't seem to be any modern poems where the woman does the persuading, but with what is known about my gender's admirable readiness for action, I guess I don't have to.

No. 6 strikes a related theme.

DWill

Saffron · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:44 pm Post subject: Re: Gather ye Rosebuds

Penelope · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 4:48 am Post subject:

Oh Dear.....I think I must be a bit like the 'Wife of Bath'.....rather than the sweet damsel. And, furthermore, I think I probably had a lot of the 'Wife of Bath' in me when I was young and still desirable.

Nobody tried to sweet-talk me into having sex, and just as well because I know I wouldn't have taken much persuading. Also, I was never sexually harrassed at work......humph!!!!

Suffice it to say, it is fortuitous that I met Norman when I was 14 and married him when I was 18.

So, whilst I enjoy the language and music of this poem - the sentiments of the young lady are beyond me. Except that in those days, the consequences of pre-marital sex could be terrifying. Still, the tone of the poem doesn't sound like she was terrified of consequences....it sounds like she was just leading him on and teasing. What do you think?

DWill · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:18 am Post subject:

Saffron · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 9:19 am Post subject:

If you notice all the poems about love are melancholy. If the young woman in #5 goes along, it would break with the tone that runs through the work. The world at the time the poems were writen was changing rapidly. It was becoming complex and harsh. Maybe the rejection and the over all melancholy is comentary on the times.

DWill · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:59 pm Post subject:

The tone is melancholy, that's for sure. I don't know why this is. The poet/speaker says in the final poem of the volume that it's just a good way to look at life--fortifies you, makes you less vulnerable to the various misfortunes that afflict us here. It is almost a medieval take on the vanity of expecting earthly happiness. The difference is that there is not even a better expectation after the grave. Though churches and graveyards form the settings for Housman's somber reflections, he never offers us any traditional Christian consolation or justification. I don't suppose he was a believer in that sense.

Still, it's a very tender melancholy he creates here. I'm partial to the meditative, elegaic voice of the poems. A well known example, often anthologized, is XIX, "To an Athlete Dying Young."

So I think for me the jury is out on the matter of the melancholy having a source in the era of the poems. The times about which he writes were fairly distant. He appears to cast a mood over them, not capture a mood that existed. This is done all the time with romantic treatments of the past. Housman's treatment, I feel, has some romantic quality to it, but it's harder to see since death permeates the poems. Can death be romantic?

DWill

Penelope · Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 4:44 pm Post subject:

I just thought I would post an 'item of input' which has affected me for many years.

The first was the 'true' story of a servant girl in an aristocratic household here in England......she was pursued by a youth...(as in the poem)...and became pregnant. She made a beautiful and intricate lace bonnet for her baby.....and when the baby was born...she placed the bonnet on the baby and then she drowned it. Because she did not know what else to do.

There is written record of this tragedy.....the world HAS improved since those days. But this young woman spoke volumes...just by her actions.

The only people who could read and write in the 17th, 18th and most of the 19th century, were the priviliged and educated. Perhaps they had 'time' to reflect on the unfairness or the absurdity of life.

If one can find the writings, thoughts, records of the ordinary people, whose words, unfortunately, were often recorded at the Gallows....or such, one often finds that the human lifespan wasn't seen as the ultimate end, but that there was a 'sense of movement' or a sense of growth of the spirit...rather than a sense of 'this is it'... all there is.

I collect and treasure...early newspapers, broadsheets and magazines....because they record the 'ordinary' events and people. I have read some early 19th century Methodist Church magazines with lots of sentimental poems about the deaths of infants and babies. I thought, 'These people were obsessed with death......of children'.....but then I read....that in Manchester, England....in the 1840's....80% of babies born, died in infancy. They were not obsessed with death.....They were attempting to come to terms with it....through poetry.

An important thing.....Poetry. And sometimes....it is more potent...if one is not distracted by the need to get the punctuation and grammar correct.

DWill · Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:26 pm Post subject:

Penelope,
Yes, when you peruse the gravestones in an old cemetery (old being 1700s in this country), you are struck by the numbers of children and babies. We can't imagine today how life could be so tenuous, death is so exceptional (relatively) in the prosperous countries..I recall a haunting couplet on one grave in Storrs, Conn: "Your son like mine may set at noon/Your soul be cauld for very soon."
Your hobby of collecting sounds fascinating.

DWill


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