MY visit to the Quantocks (A walk-ing life, November 10) sparked many thoughts about poetry and landscape, among which A Shropshire Lad, A. E. Housman’s famous collection of poems, features large. I often quote from it when I speak about beauty, drawing on the poignant stories of young men going to their deaths in the trenches of the First World War, a copy of A Shropshire Lad in their breast pockets. Often it’s ‘Into my heart an air that kills/from yon far country blows:/ What are those blue remembered hills,/what spires, what farms are those?’ Another is more dramatic: ‘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’.
This story is from the December 08, 2021 edition of Country Life UK.
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This story is from the December 08, 2021 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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