We’ll miss you . . .

. . . when you’re dead. Of course we will. Rest assured.

A. E. Housman’s poem “Is my team ploughing?” presents a dialogue between two friends, young males, one living, one dead. The recently deceased has questions about how it’s going now that he’s gone. His friend answers every question but one. Stanzas are structured as Q & A. The poem reprinted from the Project Gutenberg edition of the collection, A Shropshire Lad, which has never been out of print, is included below.

A. E. Housman is one of our most loved English poets probably because of his accessibility (he isn’t obscure,) his conventionality (his verse is traditional.) and his subject treatment (life.) These characteristics distinguish him from other soon-to-come modernist poets like Pound and Eliot. Something by Housman always makes the anthologies. 

His best qualities are his tone, which is often wry, and his sophisticated insight masked in a common-man humility.  At times he is melancholy, but it doesn’t turn to despair. Most often he’ll sigh. Charming.

From A Shropshire Lad, 1896

XXVII
“Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

“Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?”

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.

“Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?”

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

“Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?”

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.