Introduction by William Stanley Braithwaite
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919 INTRODUCTION The method of the poems in _ A Shropshire Lad _ illustrates betterthan any theory how poetry may assume the attire of reality, and yetin speech of the simplest, become in spirit the sheer quality ofloveliness. For, in these unobtrusive pages, there is nothing shunnedwhich makes the spectacle of life parade its dark and painful, itsironic and cynical burdens, as well as those images with happy andexquisite aspects. With a broader and deeper background of experienceand environment, which by some divine special privilege belongs tothe poetic imagination, it is easier to set apart and contrast theseopposing words and sympathies in a poet; but here we find them evokedin a restricted locale- an English county-where the rich, cool tranquillandscape gives a solid texture to the human show. What, I think,impresses one, thrills, like ecstatic, half-smothered strains of music,floating from unperceived instruments, in Mr. Housman's poems, isthe encounter his spirit constantly endures with life. It is, thisencounter, what you feel in the Greeks, and as in the Greeks, it is aspiritual waging of miraculous forces. There is, too, in Mr. Housman'spoems, the singularly Grecian Quality of a clean and fragrant mental andemotional temper, vibrating equally whether the theme dealt with isruin or defeat, or some great tragic crisis of spirit, or with moods andardours of pure enjoyment and simplicities of feeling. Scarcely has anymodern book of poems shown so sure a touch of genius in this respect:the magic, in a continuous glow saturating the substance of everypicture and motive with its own peculiar essence. What has been called the "cynical bitterness" of Mr. Housman's poems,is really nothing more than his ability to etch in sharp tones theactualities of experience. The poet himself is never cynical; hisjoyousness is all too apparent in the very manner and intensity ofexpression. The "lads" of Ludlow are so human to him, the hawthorn andbroom on the Severn shores are so fragrant with associations, he cannothelp but compose under a kind of imaginative wizardry of exultation,even when the immediate subject is grim or grotesque. In many ofthese brief, tense poems the reader confronts a mask, as it were, withappalling and distorted lineaments; but behind it the poet smiles,perhaps sardonically, but smiles nevertheless. In the real countenancethere are no tears or grievances, but a quizzical, humorous expressionwhich shows, when one has torn the subterfuge away, that here is aspirit whom life may menace with its contradictions and fatalities, butnever dupe with its circumstance and mystery. All this quite points to, and partly explains, the charm of the poems in_ A Shropshire Lad _. The fastidious care with which each poem is builtout of the simplest of technical elements, the precise tone and color oflanguage employed to articulate impulse and mood, and the reproductionof objective substances for a clear visualization of character andscene, all tend by a sure and unfaltering composition, to present alyric art unique in English poetry of the last twenty-five years. I dare say I have scarcely touched upon the secret of Mr. Housman'sbook. For some it may radiate from the Shropshire life he so finelyetches; for others, in the vivid artistic simplicity and unity ofvalues, through which Shropshire lads and landscapes are presented. Itmust be, however, in the miraculous fusing of the two. Whatever thatsecret is, the charm of it never fails after all these years to keep thepoems preserved with a freshness and vitality, which are the qualitiesof enduring genius.
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