A Shropshire Lad XXVI: Along the field as we came by

By A. E. Housman 1859–1936

Along the field as we came by

A year ago, my love and I,

The aspen over stile and stone

Was talking to itself alone.

"Oh who are these that kiss and pass?

A country lover and his lass;

Two lovers looking to be wed;

And time shall put them both to bed,

But she shall lie with earth above,

And he beside another love."

And sure enough beneath the tree

There walks another love with me,

And overhead the aspen heaves

Its rainy-sounding silver leaves;

And I spell nothing in their stir,

But now perhaps they speak to her,

And plain for her to understand

They talk about a time at hand

When I shall sleep with clover clad,

And she beside another lad.

Biography

At first glance nothing seems more unlikely than that the poet of the enormously popular A Shropshire Lad should be the classical scholar A. E. Housman. This Cambridge University professor of Latin left no doubt as to his priorities: the emendation of classical texts was both an intellectual search for the truth and his life's work; poetry was an emotional and physiological experience that began with a sensation in the pit of . . .

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