Author(s): A.E. Housman

Poetry

A collection of sixty-three short poems, "A Shropshire Lad" lingers on themes of youthfulness and mortality, taking as its setting a Shropshire half imagined by the poet, and thereby rendered all the more idyllic. In strikingly simple verses, including the famous stanzas known as 'When I was one-and-twenty', Housman creates a beautifully nostalgic, even wistful poem, haunted by considerations of the transience of youth in a society in which young men are sent to war and to work. This volume makes a valuable cultural addition to a society in which such themes remain so current.