Passages from A Shropshire Lad

What if the landscape of your happiest memories is closed to you now?

Into my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?That is the land of lost content,I see it shining plain,The happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come again.

What do you do with the arithmetic of a life measured in springs?

Loveliest of trees, the cherry nowIs hung with bloom along the bough,And stands about the woodland rideWearing white for Eastertide.Now, of my threescore years and ten,Twenty will not come again,And take from seventy springs a score,It only leaves me fifty more.And since to look at things in bloomFifty springs are little room,About the woodlands I will goTo see the cherry hung with snow.

He has eaten so much poison that dinner no longer frightens him.

There was a king reigned in the East:There, when kings will sit to feast,They get their fill before they thinkWith poisoned meat and poisoned drink.He gathered all that springs to birthFrom the many-venomed earth;First a little, thence to more,He sampled all her killing store;And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,Sate the king when healths went round.They put arsenic in his meatAnd stared aghast to watch him eat;They poured strychnine in his cupAnd shook to see him drink it up:

The wind that bends the trees now bent them for a Roman.

On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;The gale, it plies the saplings double,And thick on Severn snow the leaves.‘Twould blow like this through holt and hangerWhen Uricon the city stood:‘Tis the old wind in the old anger,But then it threshed another wood.Then, ‘twas before my time, the RomanAt yonder heaving hill would stare:The blood that warms an English yeoman,The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

What London looks like to someone whose only comfort was the countryside.

Yonder, lightening other loads,The seasons range the country roads,But here in London streets I kenNo such helpmates, only men;And these are not in plight to bear,If they would, another’s care.They have enough as ‘tis: I seeIn many an eye that measures meThe mortal sickness of a mindToo unhappy to be kind.Undone with misery, all they canIs to hate their fellow man;And till they drop they needs must stillLook at you and wish you ill.

The moment the party ends and the road ahead is only darkness.

Now hollow fires burn out to black,And lights are guttering low:Square your shoulders, lift your pack,And leave your friends and go.Oh never fear, man, nought’s to dread,Look not left nor right:In all the endless road you treadThere’s nothing but the night.

The case for shallowness, delivered with the authority of a hangover.

Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly:Why should men make haste to die?Empty heads and tongues a-talkingMake the rough road easy walking,And the feather pate of follyBears the falling sky.Oh, ‘tis jesting, dancing, drinkingSpins the heavy world around.If young hearts were not so clever,Oh, they would be young for ever:Think no more; ‘tis only thinkingLays lads underground.

A flirtation conducted entirely in flowers and plausible excuses.

Oh see how thick the goldcup flowersAre lying in field and lane,With dandelions to tell the hoursThat never are told again.Oh may I squire you round the meadsAnd pick you posies gay?-’Twill do no harm to take my arm.“You may, young man, you may.”Ah, spring was sent for lass and lad,‘Tis now the blood runs gold,And man and maid had best be gladBefore the world is old.What flowers to-day may flower to-morrow,But never as good as new.

The relief of no longer being the person love made you.

Oh, when I was in love with you,Then I was clean and brave,And miles around the wonder grewHow well did I behave.And now the fancy passes by,And nothing will remain,And miles around they’ll say that IAm quite myself again.