No More Learning

A SHROPSHIRE LAD

By A. E. Housman

Introduction by William Stanley Braithwaite

1919




INTRODUCTION


The method of the poems in _ A Shropshire Lad _ illustrates better
than any theory how poetry may assume the attire of reality, and yet
in speech of the simplest, become in spirit the sheer quality of
loveliness. For, in these unobtrusive pages, there is nothing shunned
which makes the spectacle of life parade its dark and painful, its
ironic and cynical burdens, as well as those images with happy and
exquisite aspects. With a broader and deeper background of experience
and environment, which by some divine special privilege belongs to
the poetic imagination, it is easier to set apart and contrast these
opposing words and sympathies in a poet; but here we find them evoked
in a restricted locale- an English county-where the rich, cool tranquil
landscape gives a solid texture to the human show. What, I think,
impresses one, thrills, like ecstatic, half-smothered strains of music,
floating from unperceived instruments, in Mr. Housman's poems, is
the encounter his spirit constantly endures with life. It is, this
encounter, what you feel in the Greeks, and as in the Greeks, it is a
spiritual waging of miraculous forces. There is, too, in Mr. Housman's
poems, the singularly Grecian Quality of a clean and fragrant mental and
emotional temper, vibrating equally whether the theme dealt with is
ruin or defeat, or some great tragic crisis of spirit, or with moods and
ardours of pure enjoyment and simplicities of feeling. Scarcely has any
modern book of poems shown so sure a touch of genius in this respect:
the magic, in a continuous glow saturating the substance of every
picture and motive with its own peculiar essence.

What has been called the "cynical bitterness" of Mr. Housman's poems,
is really nothing more than his ability to etch in sharp tones the
actualities of experience. The poet himself is never cynical; his
joyousness is all too apparent in the very manner and intensity of
expression. The "lads" of Ludlow are so human to him, the hawthorn and
broom on the Severn shores are so fragrant with associations, he cannot
help but compose under a kind of imaginative wizardry of exultation,
even when the immediate subject is grim or grotesque.
With a broader and deeper background of experience
and environment, which by some divine special privilege belongs to
the poetic imagination, it is easier to set apart and contrast these
opposing words and sympathies in a poet; but here we find them evoked
in a restricted locale- an English county-where the rich, cool tranquil
landscape gives a solid texture to the human show. What, I think,
impresses one, thrills, like ecstatic, half-smothered strains of music,
floating from unperceived instruments, in Mr. Housman's poems, is
the encounter his spirit constantly endures with life. It is, this
encounter, what you feel in the Greeks, and as in the Greeks, it is a
spiritual waging of miraculous forces. There is, too, in Mr. Housman's
poems, the singularly Grecian Quality of a clean and fragrant mental and
emotional temper, vibrating equally whether the theme dealt with is
ruin or defeat, or some great tragic crisis of spirit, or with moods and
ardours of pure enjoyment and simplicities of feeling. Scarcely has any
modern book of poems shown so sure a touch of genius in this respect:
the magic, in a continuous glow saturating the substance of every
picture and motive with its own peculiar essence.

What has been called the "cynical bitterness" of Mr. Housman's poems,
is really nothing more than his ability to etch in sharp tones the
actualities of experience. The poet himself is never cynical; his
joyousness is all too apparent in the very manner and intensity of
expression. The "lads" of Ludlow are so human to him, the hawthorn and
broom on the Severn shores are so fragrant with associations, he cannot
help but compose under a kind of imaginative wizardry of exultation,
even when the immediate subject is grim or grotesque. In many of
these brief, tense poems the reader confronts a mask, as it were, with
appalling and distorted lineaments; but behind it the poet smiles,
perhaps sardonically, but smiles nevertheless. In the real countenance
there are no tears or grievances, but a quizzical, humorous expression
which shows, when one has torn the subterfuge away, that here is a
spirit whom life may menace with its contradictions and fatalities, but
never dupe with its circumstance and mystery.

All this quite points to, and partly explains, the charm of the poems in
_ A Shropshire Lad _. The fastidious care with which each poem is built
out of the simplest of technical elements, the precise tone and color of
language employed to articulate impulse and mood, and the reproduction
of objective substances for a clear visualization of character and
scene, all tend by a sure and unfaltering composition, to present a
lyric art unique in English poetry of the last twenty-five years.

I dare say I have scarcely touched upon the secret of Mr.