A Shropshire Lad

A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘You Smile Upon Your Friend To-Day’

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

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 to the lover’s say,
And happy is the lover.

’Tis late to hearken, late to smile,
But better late than never:
I shall have lived a little while
Before I die for ever.

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A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘The Lent Lily’

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

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 contains the signature twist we find in much of his poetry, as melancholy breaks in on hope.

The Lent Lily

’Tis spring; come out to ramble
The hilly brakes around,
For under thorn and bramble
About the hollow ground
The primroses are found.

And there’s the windflower chilly
With all the winds at play,
And there’s the Lenten lily
That has not long to stay
And dies on Easter day.

And since till girls go maying
You find the primrose still,
And find the windflower playing

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A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

One of the most famous and best-loved poems in A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’ is a powerful eulogy for a man who is the human embodiment of physical fitness and prowess, but who faces an early death owing to illness.

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A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘Into my heart an air that kills’

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

A. E. Housman (1859-1936) was one of the greatest classicists of his age, and was also, following the success of his (self-published) first volume of poems, A Shropshire Lad (1896), a hugely popular poet.

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A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now’

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

A. E. Housman (1859-1936) didn’t write a great deal of poetry. When he died, he had published just two slim volumes, A Shropshire Lad (published at his own expense in 1896) and the fittingly titled Last Poems (1922).

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