A Shropshire Lad

Shropshire: A Place of Imagined Sexual Contentment Published in 1869, A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad stands as one of the most socially acclaimed collections of English poetry from the Victorian age. This period in British history, however, proves, by judiciary focus (the Criminal Law Amendment of 1885), to be conflictive with Housman’s own internal conflicts concerning the homoerotic tendencies which he discovered in his admiration of fellow Oxford student Moses Jackson. Housman, much unlike other

A. E. Housman was a well known poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Within his two most famous publications, A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems, Housman effectively uses his adept understanding of language, its usage, and style to portray the significant themes behind all of his poems. To an Athlete Dying Young is a perfect example of Housman’s ability to convey his message to the reader through his use of diction, syntax, and tone. Writers make specific choices in the type of words, sentence

It is extremely easy to associate late Victorian poetry with simple and beautiful things when poems about the aesthetics of both nature and city life were so popular at the time. Decadent poets in particular loved to write about the beautiful, especially the beautiful in everyday things. They believed that surrounding yourself with beautiful objects, including poetry, led to a better way of life, and that art required no further purpose than being aesthetically pleasing. When it comes to the theme

Housman 's "To An Athlete Dying Young" A. E. Housman 's "To an Athlete Dying Young," also known as Lyric XIX in A Shropshire Lad, holds as its main theme the premature death of a young athlete as told from the point of view of a friend serving as pall bearer. The poem reveals the concept that those dying at the peak of their glory or youth are really quite lucky. The first few readings of "To an Athlete Dying Young" provides the reader with an understanding of Housman 's view of death. Additional

People will eventually be forgotten, and life will continue on earth for everyone else. The poem structure is an eight stanza quatrain with a rhyme scheme of ABCB. “Is football playing / Along the river shore, / With lads to chase the leather, / Now I stand up no more?” (Housman 9-12). Each stanza alternates between questions from the dead man and answers from his friend. Stanzas that are quoted represent the dead man’s questions. The stanzas without quotations are

his profession throughout the years at various universities, Housman became renown as a classicist for his own editions of countless Roman poets, such as Juvenal, Manilius, and Lucan. In 1896, Housman penned his first volume of poetry called A Shropshire Lad, which contains the poem “To an Athlete

Cherry trees covered with snow, creating a forest where you want to go. Each bough is piled high with the powdery ice and you decide it looks rather nice You look around you and see god above, and in the lamb’s eyes, you see God’s love. The themes in the poems “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, “Loveliest of Trees” by A E Housman and “The Lamb” by William Blake, reinforce the author’s purpose of demonstrating the different ways that human beings interact with and develop a perspective

The Power of Poetry Terence This is Stupid Stuff, by A.E. Housman compelling work of poetry that addresses mainly the theme of the power of poetry and why we should read poetry. Many sections in this poem portray this theme, but one line that shows it best is the section in which Terence, the person whose perspective the poem is being told through, explains that you need to read little bit of poetry so you will be prepared when hard times come to you. Another section that portrays this theme of

putting such a high value on as individuals and as a society. A.E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young" gives us a chance to consider how high of a pedestal we place fame on. We are challenged with the fact that the author thinks the athlete is a "smart lad," or lucky, for dying young and maintaining his hero status in the public eye. Normally, does fame seem meaningless when faced with death? As seen in the poem, pride and competition often go hand in hand. In "To an Athlete Dying Young," pride plays

the runner on their shoulders after he had won a race now carry him to his place of final rest (Explanation of: 'A Shropshire Lad). This image gives a sympathetic mood to the poem because it is close to when he was being celebrated. The speaker changes the mood after that to a good mood and explains why it was good for him to die at an early age. He gives a compliment to the "smart lad" for leaving "fields where glory does not stay"(Explanation of: 'To an Athlete Dying Young'). The image at the end