A SHROPSHIRE LAD, 1972 : after A.E. Housman

Written, in the style of A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman, 1896, following a visit to Clun, Shropshire, England and seeing the name Hull on the war memorial in the church. The playwright, John Osborne, is buried in the graveyard.

A SHROPSHIRE LAD, 1972

after A.E. Housman

The hawthorn sprinkles up and down

The hedgerows, waving row by row,

In garlands rich about the town,

To fete the land with blossom snow.

Look left, look right, the hills are bright

Around the church that recalls Hull.

The cherry blossoms Easter light

Candles a corner never dull.

For Hull, the Shropshire lad, now lost,

Named on a wall of brutal dead,

Did serve his Queen and paid a cost

That bought for him a cold, clay bed.

Being himself a sterling lad

Took suit and shilling of the Queen,

Since she, the loyal long has had

For targets shot by foes unseen.

When first he left his Shropshire dale,

The Queen's short shilling soon to earn,

No promise made could then prevail

In battle harsh, where death did burn.

That time he won his town the race

Is many years ago and some.

The glow has left his beaming face,

His vigour long has dust become.

The blue hills now shine rapeseed gold

In sunbursts splashed across the dale.

Hull, the lad, will never grow old

His cheeks, once rose, wax deathly pale.

'Tis sure no pleasure to see shot

This lad the hills of Shropshire bred.

He loved the days his world begot.

What future now for him shot dead?

So Hull now roams the lost blue hills,

In a quieter place than Clun.

No more he suffers woes or ills

His living joys all doomsday done.

Where Osborne, playwright, takes his rest,

All anger long since quelled,

Daffodils gayly nod the quest

To lands where early death is knelled.

The Queen Hull served lives well indeed,

In castles vast and demesnes grand.

While worms on Hull’s flesh ever feed

And fertilise his much loved land.

Still grim thunder from Westminster

Sets the young on the path to war.

MPs shout war cries sinister

In a call to kill folk close and far.

Let Shropshire lads now stay in Clun

And work the hills as best they know.

Let MPs, silent, leave them alone

As lads lift arms but for to sow.