Shropshire Lad

[Pabmusic]

* [A good example of this modern-day tendency is the way that many people miss what lies behind "The lads in their hundreds" from A Shropshire Lad. It's not about regret that so many young men will 'die in their glory'. Housman's point is that those who will die are the lucky ones ("the fortunate fellows that now you can never discern") because they will 'never be old'. Therefore, they won't lose their youthful looks or their inner truth. That's a very different message than what many think it gives.]

[french frank]

As for Butterworth's 'Lads in Their Hundreds' - the real irony is still very bitter: was it more 'fortunate' that Butterworth died young? For Housman's 'Lads' - I'm not so sure that I buy your interpretation. What is 'their glory' - just the fact that they died 'handsome of face and handsome of heart'? Or - Dulce et decorum est?

[Pabmusic]

...As for Butterworth's 'Lads in Their Hundreds' - the real irony is still very bitter: was it more 'fortunate' that Butterworth died young? For Housman's 'Lads' - I'm not so sure that I buy your interpretation. What is 'their glory' - just the fact that they died 'handsome of face and handsome of heart'? Or - Dulce et decorum est?

Don't get me wrong - I feel the irony as much as anyone and I think it was a tragic waste that GSKB died in 1916. But the irony comes from our hindsight, not Butterworth's. It's just that the poem is explicit as to its 'meaning' (or, as you say, my 'interpretation'). Quite a few of the Shropshire Lad poems contain the idea that it's preferable to die young. The narrator of "The lads in their hundreds" wants to talk to "the fortunate fellows" who "will carry their looks and their truth to the grave" when they will "die in their glory and never be old", and then he can "talk with them friendly and wish them farewell"...

How about? -

"Shot? so quick, so clean an ending?
Oh that was right, lad, that was brave:
Yours was not an ill for mending,
'Twas best to take it to the grave,

Oh you had forethought, you could reason.
And saw your road and where it led,
And early wise and brave in season
Put the pistol to your head..." [cont in the same vein for five more verses]

Or:

"...Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts ti rive the heart are here, an all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation -
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?"

Or:

"If young hearts were not so clever,
Oh, they would be young forever:
Think no more; 'tis only thinking
Lays lads underground."

Surely it's difficult to think that the person who wrote such sentiments was feeling sorrow at the potential loss of young life?

[Sir Velo]

Don't get me wrong - I feel the irony as much as anyone and I think it was a tragic waste that GSKB died in 1916. But the irony comes from our hindsight, not Butterworth's. It's just that the poem is explicit as to its 'meaning' (or, as you say, my 'interpretation'). Quite a few of the Shropshire Lad poems contain the idea that it's preferable to die young. The narrator of "The lads in their hundreds" wants to talk to "the fortunate fellows" who "will carry their looks and their truth to the grave" when they will "die in their glory and never be old", and then he can "talk with them friendly and wish them farewell"...

Surely it's difficult to think that the person who wrote such sentiments was feeling sorrow at the potential loss of young life?

Yours is certainly one interpretation. The other, which I favour, is that the poet is commenting ironically on the prevailing stiff upper lip attitude as personified by the Kitchener recruitment posters. Surely, there is a genuine basis in the text for seeing the narrator's comments as those of the warmongering establishment, and not of Housman himself?

[Demetrius]

Yours is certainly one interpretation. The other, which I favour, is that the poet is commenting ironically on the prevailing stiff upper lip attitude as personified by the Kitchener recruitment posters. Surely, there is a genuine basis in the text for seeing the narrator's comments as those of the warmongering establishment, and not of Housman himself?

Any letters of him to shed light on his position? Only looking into the text, it will be difficult to prove either position.

[Pabmusic]

Yours is certainly one interpretation. The other, which I favour, is that the poet is commenting ironically on the prevailing stiff upper lip attitude as personified by the Kitchener recruitment posters. Surely, there is a genuine basis in the text for seeing the narrator's comments as those of the warmongering establishment, and not of Housman himself?

Any letters of him to shed light on his position? Only looking into the text, it will be difficult to prove either position.

The problem with the "Oh what a lovely war" view is that A Shropshire Lad was published in 1896, even before the 2nd Boer War (the really horrible one) and certainly before conscription and Kitchener posters. At least my view is supported by the text and all the rest of Housman's output.

[Sir Velo]

Any letters of him to shed light on his position? Only looking into the text, it will be difficult to prove either position.

I think the prevailing reception at the time was that the poems were deeply pessimistic. Certainly, the settings of Butterworth and VW (think "Is My Team Ploughing") support this view of the poems.

However, for an alternate take:

When lads have done with labour
In Shropshire, one will cry
"Let's go and kill a neighbour,"
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."

[Pabmusic]

..."The hangman mutters: "Plenty
Even for Housman's verse."

There's another parody (can't recall whose) that starts:

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A fine upstanding lad like you...?

I'm afraid (and however infra dig it seems now to say it) but Housman was a particular brand of "Innocent Old Queen" that's not common now.

Dear boy...

[amateur51]

There's another parody (can't recall whose) that starts:

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A fine upstanding lad like you...?

I'm afraid (and however infra dig it seems now to say it) but Housman was a particular brand of "Innocent Old Queen" that's not common now.

Dear boy...

How very dare you! - nothing common about Carruthers whatsoever

[Pabmusic]

How very dare you! - nothing common about Carruthers whatsoever

I do apologise, Ams. You are so right. Raffles would have understood, Bunny my boy.

[french frank]

Surely it's difficult to think that the person who wrote such sentiments was feeling sorrow at the potential loss of young life?

No, I didn't think it was sorrow either. Just objective comment.

A similar one is To An Athlete Who Dies Young (no indication that he was killed - 'Eyes the shady night has shut'). But it's clear that he died when his triumph was at its greatest - no higher to go. For runners, especially, where they will outlive their fame.

"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."

If that's what you meant - then I agree. But I do think there are several poems [Later: IpsosMORI man came to ask my opinions - then it was time for lunch] which specifically mention soldiers dying:

"East and West on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads, and dead and rotten;
None that go return again." ('The Lads ...' is the next poem)

Or

"What thoughts at heart have you and I
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well."

(Sorry if the discussion had moved on in my absence!)

[Ferretfancy]

The problem with the "Oh what a lovely war" view is that A Shropshire Lad was published in 1896, even before the 2nd Boer War (the really horrible one) and certainly before conscription and Kitchener posters. At least my view is supported by the text and all the rest of Housman's output.

It's interesting that Housman's poems had such a profound effect on numerous English composers. In a more buttoned up age it would seem that the homo-eroticism passed them by. Wicked, I know, but I'm afraid I can't forget Alan Bennett's reference in Forty Years On, when he describes what he calls "One of Virginia Woolf's Sunday Morning soiree's. The Berlins were there, I recall, Irving and Isaiah, and sometimes AE Housman, lured down by the promise of all in wrestling at Finsbury Park Baths."

[LeMartinPecheur]

There's another parody (can't recall whose) that starts:

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A fine upstanding lad like you...?

It's by Hugo Kingsmill. Housman apparently thought it the only good Shropshire Lad parody.

Full text:
What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean upstanding chap like you?
Why, if your throat is hard to slit,
Slit your girl's and swing for it!

Like enough you won't be glad
When they come to hang you, lad,
But bacon's not the only thing
That's cured by hanging from a string.

When the blotting pad of night
Sucks the latest drop of light,
Lads whose job is still to do
Shall whet their knives and think of you.

[french frank]

I don't think one requires 'proof' that either Housman's poems or Butterworth's song cycle were directly influenced by the Great War!

But The Lads in Their Hundreds was the poem mentioned, and the British Army - including The King's Shropshire Light Infantry - was involved in a number of conflicts between the time Housman was born in 1859 and the date he published the work in 1896.There are so many poems about young soldiers dying that I find it equally hard to imagine that the poem simply refers to lads who happen to die young.

[Barbirollians]

There's another parody (can't recall whose) that starts:

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A fine upstanding lad like you...?

I'm afraid (and however infra dig it seems now to say it) but Housman was a particular brand of "Innocent Old Queen" that's not common now.

Dear boy...

Not so innocent judging by the wikipedia entry which suggested he liked reading French books that were deemed pornography in England . If Butterworth was severely heterosexual - a brilliant phrase but I am not sure what is meant by it - did the very obvious subtext of the poems escape him ? Is it harsh to see Housman's veneration for early death of these young men as being about his attitude to lost male beauty as much as the general perils of growing old ?