Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) was not a prolific poet – he published just two collections in his lifetime – but he was, and is, a popular one. ‘Spring Morning’, which was published in Housman’s less well-known second volume, Last Poems (1922), the long-awaited follow-up to his 1896 collection A Shropshire […]
Tag: A. E. Housman
‘In My Own Shire, If I Was Sad’: A Poem by A. E. Housman
One of the 63 poems that make up A. E. Housman’s most famous volume of poems, A Shropshire Lad (1896), the poem beginning ‘In My Own Shire, If I Was Sad’ is written in rhyming couplets and is about the change the ‘Shropshire lad’ feels when he moves from his […]
A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘You Smile Upon Your Friend To-Day’
Taken from A. E. Housman’s first, and best-known, collection, A Shropshire Lad (1896), ‘You smile upon your friend to-day’ is a short lyric in which the ‘lad’ of the collection’s title, who was originally named Terence Hearsay, You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over; You hearken […]
A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘The Lent Lily’
The poet A. E. Housman is best-known for A Shropshire Lad (1896), which became a bestselling volume of poetry at the turn of the century and would later be popular among soldiers during the First World War. ‘The Lent Lily’ is not one of the best-known of Housman’s poems, but it […]
A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘Smooth between sea and land’
‘Smooth between sea and land’ is the first line of a poem by A. E. Housman (1859-1936), who is best-known as the author of A Shropshire Lad (1896). This poem, however, didn’t appear in that volume and indeed remained unpublished until after Housman’s death. Smooth between sea and land Is […]