A Shropshire Lad…book review
without a lot of passion
Book review:
A Shropshire Lad
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1990
51 pages
reprint of the “Authorized Edition 1924”
Alfred Edward Housman embraced the late 19th poetry style of relentless rhyming,
which limits word choice and the scope of imagery.
His narratives are very simply credible without a lot of passion. It’s too easy to let a singsong rhythm be the main feature of verse after verse after verse. A lot of his poetry is written in iambic tetrameter.
Housman’s A Shropshire Lad does offer some paths to reflections, as in Section II, which is an
acceptance of the reality of the seasons, and acceptance of the reality of the rhythms in our lives,
and a recognition of natural beauty that surrounds us:
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Scarlet Letter
the beating hearts…by Nathaniel Hawthorne
click here
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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