"shropshire" poems
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing 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 bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
3.8k
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
3.5k
Shropshire the outback of hives and mires
A birthplace of industrial revolution
Built with ***** iron and bricks
submerged in the depths of the water beds
Shropshire the strength in the metal structure
A cast of firm shields and fields
The greenery of contrasting yellowy yields
A mirage of hills sat on pillar heights
The breeze so fresh as sun prints on the canal
The warmth so intense as the bird hums in the nests
Labour artisans and metalsmith at the heart of coalbrook dale
Bricks aisles of pathways along the river
Bordered by vintage delicacies of the magnificent nature
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 9:28 AM UTC
O woe, woe,
People are born and die,
We also shall be dead pretty soon
Therefore let us act as if we were
dead already.
The bird sits on the hawthorn tree
But he dies also, presently.
Some lads get hung, and some get shot.
Woeful is this human lot.
Woe! woe, etcetera . . . .
London is a woeful place,
Shropshire is much pleasanter.
Then let us smile a little space
Upon fond nature’s morbid grace.
Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera . . . .
2.7k
Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.
More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their reins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.
Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there's neither heat nor cold.
But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.
2.7k
Look not in my eyes, for fear
They mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
And love it and be lost like me.
One the long nights through must lie
Spent in star-defeated sighs,
But why should you as well as I
Perish? gaze not in my eyes.
A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,
One that many loved in vain,
Looked into a forest well
And never looked away again.
There, when the turf in springtime flowers,
With downward eye and gazes sad,
Stands amid the glancing showers
A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.
2.4k
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 hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.
Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.
2.4k
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,
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.
2k
From Clee to heaven the beacon burns,
The shires have seen it plain,
From north and south the sign returns
And beacons burn again.
Look left, look right, the hills are bright,
The dales are light between,
Because 'tis fifty years to-night
That God has saved the Queen.
Now, when the flame they watch not towers
About the soil they trod,
Lads, we'll remember friends of ours
Who shared the work with God.
To skies that knit their heartstrings right,
To fields that bred them brave,
The saviours come not home to-night:
Themselves they could not save.
It dawns in Asia, tombstones show
And Shropshire names are read;
And the Nile spills his overflow
Beside the Severn's dead.
We pledge in peace by farm and town
The Queen they served in war,
And fire the beacons up and down
The land they perished for.
"God save the Queen" we living sing,
From height to height 'tis heard;
And with the rest your voices ring,
Lads of the Fifty-third.
Oh, God will save her, fear you not:
Be you the men you've been,
Get you the sons your fathers got,
And God will save the Queen.
1.7k
As through the wild green hills of Wyre
The train ran, changing sky and shire,
And far behind, a fading crest,
Low in the forsaken west
Sank the high-reared head of Clee,
My hand lay empty on my knee.
Aching on my knee it lay:
That morning half a shire away
So many an honest fellow's fist
Had well-nigh wrung it from the wrist.
Hand, said I, since now we part
From fields and men we know by heart,
For strangers' faces, strangers' lands,--
Hand, you have held true fellows' hands.
Be clean then; rot before you do
A thing they'll not believe of you.
You and I must keep from shame
In London streets the Shropshire name;
On banks of Thames they must not say
Severn breeds worse men than they;
And friends abroad must bear in mind
Friends at home they leave behind.
Oh, I shall be stiff and cold
When I forget you, hearts of gold;
The land where I shall mind you not
Is the land where all's forgot.
And if my foot returns no more
To Teme nor Corve nor Severn shore,
Luck, my lads, be with you still
By falling stream and standing hill,
By chiming tower and whispering tree,
Men that made a man of me.
About your work in town and farm
Still you'll keep my head from harm,
Still you'll help me, hands that gave
A grasp to friend me to the grave.
1.6k
When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street
Where I lodge a little while,
If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,
Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.
In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;
There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;
Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.
1.5k
On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.
East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.
Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.
1.5k
From Clee to heaven the beacon burns,
The shires have seen it plain,
From north and south the sign returns
And beacons burn again.
Look left, look right, the hills are bright,
The dales are light between,
Because 'tis fifty years to-night
That God has saved the Queen.
Now, when the flame they watch not towers
About the soil they trod,
Lads, we'll remember friends of ours
Who shared the work with God.
To skies that knit their heartstrings right,
To fields that bred them brave,
The saviours come not home to-night:
Themselves they could not save.
It dawns in Asia, tombstones show
And Shropshire names are read;
And the Nile spills his overflow
Beside the Severn's dead.
We pledge in peace by farm and town
The Queen they served in war,
And fire the beacons up and down
The land they perished for.
"God save the Queen" we living sing,
From height to height 'tis heard;
And with the rest your voices ring,
Lads of the Fifty-third.
Oh, God will save her, fear you not:
Be you the men you've been,
Get you the sons your fathers got,
And God will save the Queen.
1.5k
White in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank above;
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
Still, still the shadows stay:
My feet upon the moonlit dust
Pursue the ceaseless way.
The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight though reach the track,
Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well,
The way will guide one back.
But ere the circle homeward hies
Far, far must it remove:
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
1.4k
*had read some of his poems
but never stood at his statue
a local boy become a famous lad
revered crafter of a shropshire lad
now here i was with my digital camera
knowing full well it was no chimera
being here at the shrine of a wordsmith
whose professorial gaze is wide and sweeping
i tell you straight that for joy my heart is weeping
you will ask if i am a friend of narcissus
that mythical lad with conceit like a colossus
for after i've gone click! click!
i see my image embedded in the shiny black marble
and i feel like a visiting poet embraced by another in stone*
Oct 8, 2016
Oct 8, 2016 at 4:39 AM UTC
A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896.
IF it chance your eye offend you,
Pluck it out, lad, and be sound:
’Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you,
And many a balsam grows on ground.
And if your hand or foot offend you,
Cut it off, lad, and be whole;
But play the man, stand up and end you,
When your sickness is your soul.
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 10:39 AM UTC
Alfred Edward Housman wrote about this county from London,
we smoke pipes and drink pints to honour the scholar's story,
which can be checked out the library, former learning quarters
of an explorer named Charles Darwin, who sits in grey outside,
despite leaving town in adolescence, returning from Galapagos
to The Mount, where my parents met in mental health sickness,
gave life to an original species that theories would have hated,
like Robert Clive, who earned his knighthood by looting India,
cried in parliament, now we want his stage ousted, his house is
next to the cottage where I sleep restless because myself and
a few other Shropshire lads failed to escape, even after studying
centurion debates, athletic form and getting serenaded by greats,
where are the names of those who rose from minimum wage?
Sep 28, 2020
Sep 28, 2020 at 12:30 PM UTC
used to be in wales, now all shropshire,
borders. a small town with plenty to do.
qubed gallery quoted poetry, refinely
drawn. one man left standing, my face
collected.
salt in abundance, ready for the pigs
head, he really was making brawn,
ear stuck from the saucepan, with
plans for brains on toast for tea.
i lost earth and heaven,
read greengage summer instead.
rummer godden.
sbm.
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 1:47 AM UTC
Darwinism has much more
to do with phonetic encoding
than with theorising
an absence of theology
(with signs an absece of the
practice of 2 + 2 = 4), or
trying to depose god or Tsar
of Henry VIII prior to the bishop
the cardinal... the priest, a dog...
forget genesis or creativity,
remember dentistry...
in vacuum who's the happiest?
a dog... and by god's grace we're the
remnant of his existence, dodging dogs
in mirror not so chiral...
merely saliva... and by demand
i know how to berserker a revisionist
stand-off for a lampoon to say but one
ensured non-differential letter!
hence him less operatic than her,
with her ******** vowel ooh ooh ah
and his netting stability in Cumbria and
Shropshire and suburbia in general,
i.e. hula hoop... a sexuality of symbols,
to think any man might treat
vowels as feminine and consonants as male...
hmm!
Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016 at 8:16 PM UTC
now the grass is mowed
with stripes. perfumed air
pervades the lanes, the corridors.
tell me tales of oswald.
crow bird proposed,
the ring returned..
perhaps his presence
was required?
one wonders if they asked
before they hung him
on the tree,
oswald's tree.
perfumed air
pervaids the lanes.
shropshire, such a pretty place.
sbm.
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 12:24 AM UTC
*i'm back to drinking that milky absinthe of Turkey, another night and i'll **** a ******* keyhole with my eye.*
after nearing a 36 hour stretch of being fully awake,
is the serotonin in my brain became caffeine,
i figure, if i managed this diet alcohol free
and push the limits to, say, 52 hours, through
my brain's lack recuperation, i could suffer one last
major lie in on the electric bed and be happily gone,
even physical labour doesn't allow be being tired,
stuffing my stomach to ensure the blood flow went
to the gut... that giant star moving in the night
yesterday above my house didn't help either -
maybe that's why i left studying science, after all
the major discoveries, scientists became a bit
like priests, so entrenched in their beliefs,
artists can theorise, sure, but they rarely make things
dogmatic, take for example Frank O'Hara's manifesto
concerning Personism, the dogmatic in art doesn't
come from artists, hardly a single impressionist
could allow themselves a sticker with:
hello, my name is MONET... champagne and canapés,
artists don't bother defining themselves by
movements... it's the rich girls & boys who do that,
incapable to stomach the truth, the bourgeoisie reality
(proto-Marxism, borrowing money, eh?),
they can't become artists they become critics,
they're the one ones distributing the 'hello, my name is'
stickers for everyone to stick onto themselves,
sure they provide the money - the really rich?
ha ha... the fifth earl of Shropshire hangs the first
earl of Shropshire on his wall... like in Buckingham
palace Queen Elizabeth said of Francis Backon's
artwork: oh that horrid man painting those horrendous
monstrosities of metaphysical plastic surgeries?
the really rich deal with hereditary art, things passed
down, priceless artefacts, which would hardly fetch
£100 million at an auction house like Sotheby's,
believe me... they might get a tenner at best.
May 27, 2016
May 27, 2016 at 4:09 PM UTC
I
am sinking
and there's ****** on the street
no coppers on the beat
they're raiding a cannabis farm
which was out of harms way
somewhere in
Wiltshire
or
Shropshire
but
plenty of cops there.
What am I doing here?
treading on land mines?
reading the life lines ?
I
know there were better times
but do not know when.
Behind the lace curtain firewall
and the hand crafted doily
she spoils me.
I like it.
Feb 25, 2017
Feb 25, 2017 at 2:22 AM UTC