A Shropshire Lad

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

Penelope · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 12:10 pm Post subject:

I have been reading III - The Recruit - over and over....I like it....and I don't know why.

Anyway I thought I'd leave a link on here in case you might like to look at Ludlow. Nothing to be melancholy about there!!!

http://www.enjoyengland.com/destinations/find/heart-of-england/shropsh ire/ludlow.aspx?SE=GGL&CAT=HolidaysDestinations&KEY=Ludlow&MED=St

If...if...if it has worked. I'll try it and if not I'll try again...like Robert the Bruce.

Of Ludlow Tower....I can't find anything except a mobile phone mast!!!

Can any of you enlighten me? I do feel ignorant.

Saffron · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 1:02 pm Post subject: Re: Gather ye Rosebuds

Saffron · Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:26 am Post subject:

Just a note I meant to make on the previous post. Julie Ward Howe also wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

DWill · Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:29 am Post subject:

What is thy thought of me?
What is thy feeling?
Lov'st thou the veil of sense,
Or its revealing?

Leav'st thou the maiden rose
Drooping and blushing,
Or rend'st its bosom with
Kissing and crushing?

I would be beautiful
That thou should'st woo me,
Gentle, delightsome, but
To draw thee to me.

Yet should thy longing eye
Ever caress me,
And quickened Fantasy
Only, possess me,

Thus thy heart's highest need
Long would I cherish,
Lest its more trivial wish
Pall, and then perish.

Would that Love's fond pursuit
Were crownèd never,
Or that his virgin kiss
Lasted for ever!

Saffron,
I read it that way, too, that she'd rather not be loved platonically. The third and fourth stanzas seem to clearly give her preference to have him all over her. But if it is to be that his eye, only, caress her, so that she has only a fantasy of sex, she'd be happy with that. But isn't that only so that the possibility of physical love would be kept alive? ("Lest its more trivial wish/Pall, and then perish.") Rather than lose him altogether, she'd rather that the relationship not be consummated ("love's fond pursuit/Were crowned never); then, at least, his chaste kiss last forever. (Something similar to what Keats says In "Grecian Urn," that to prolong forever an intense expectatation can be better than satiation, because then there's no letdown?)
By the way, what is it that makes me surprised to see a poem like this from her? (Maybe it's because of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic") I just have a stereotype of her and other women of the time as being all prudish. Of course it's very inaccurate, as they were out ahead in many ways. I scanned Wiki and found out that she had an unfinished novel called Hermaphrodite.
Good find!
DWill

Penelope · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 6:32 am Post subject:

Quote Saffron:

Saffron · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 6:52 am Post subject:

Penelope,
Flanders and Swann are much like Mark Russell in the US.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of5sLO9rVLs

Thanks for the laugh!

Saffron

Penelope · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:29 am Post subject:

Thanks Saffron: I hadn't heard of him, but there are others in my family who will enjoy this too.

But Hark!!! I hear the footsteps of Chris approaching.....we have posted this 'off topic'.....

Perhaps he'll move it to Whimsey......heads down Saffron...look busy!!! Embarassed

DWill · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:47 pm Post subject:

Yes, I'll have to bring the class back to the topic, which is (remember?) The Shropshire Lad. Actually, Saffron has a valid excuse to watch from the sidelines if she wishes: she's not into depression right now; that is, she's not into risking feeling worse! But why would that happen from this little book of poems? I have a couple of statistics. What percentage of the poems would you estimate deal directly with death? No, it's not all of them. By my count it's "only" 29 of the 63, or less than half. That leaves 34 for happier subjects. Well, not exactly. The mood could be rated as happy in exactly one of the poems. Maybe you recall it. It's XLII, "The Merry Guide." I kept waiting for this poem to get to the real point, which had to be something to do with the grave, but it didn't! Housman slipped it in there probably at the insistence of his wife.

Which of these poems are to you the weirdest? I know what my two candidates are. XLIII, "The Immortal Part" does grimness about as well as it could be done. I like this one a lot. How could anyone not with this final stanza:

Before this fire of sense decay,
This smoke of thought blow clean away,
And leave with ancient night alone
The stedfast and enduring bone.

The immortal part is bone, of course, not the soul, which the poet says exists but dies with the flesh.

My other choice for weirdness is LIII, "The True Lover." It's not subtle at all; I'm sure you'll get the obvious point (sort of a bad pun).

My favorite thematic group, of which I count 8 poems, is yearning for the country of youth when exiled in the city. These are very affecting, I think.

And I still like the penultimate poem where Terence defends his gloomy esthetic. This has a lot of dash and brio.

Just wanted to talk about the book before I go off for a week's vacation. See you all later.

DWill

Penelope · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 3:52 am Post subject:

Hope you have a great holiday DWill!!!

I will swat up on Shropshire Lad - I feel as though I should be upholding it, since its basis is so close to home (literaly) but do you know what? I don't like it much at all.

I suppose even a Philistine is entitled to her opinion!!! Wink

Thomas Hood · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 2:08 pm Post subject:


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