Farewell to Barn and Stack and Tree (by A.E. Housman). Poem 8 of A Shropeshire Lad.

 “Farewell to barn and stack and tree” is

the first line of poem VII (8) in Housman’s 

A Shropshire Lad. You can hear me reciting at:

Poetry & Folklore - YouTube

The Poem:

‘Farewell to barn and stack and tree,

     Farewell to Severn shore.

Terence, look your last at me,

     For I come home no more.

 

‘The sun burns on the half-mown hill,

     By now the blood is dried;

And Maurice amongst the hay lies still

     And my knife is in his side.

 

‘My mother thinks us long away;

    ’Tis time the field were mown.

She had two sons at rising day,

     To-night she’ll be alone.

 

‘And here’s a bloody hand to shake,

     And oh, man, here’s good-bye;

We’ll sweat no more on scythe and rake,

     My bloody hands and I.

 

 ‘I wish you strength to bring you pride,

     And a love to keep you clean,

And I wish you luck, come Lammastide,

     At racing on the green.

 

‘Long for me the rick will wait,

    And long will wait the fold,

And long will stand the empty plate,

    And dinner will be cold.’

Scanned Version

(Accented syllables underlined):

   

‘Farewell to barn and stack and tree,

     Farewell to Severn shore.

Terence, look your last at me,

     For I come home no more.

 

‘The sun burns on the half-mown hill,

     By now the blood is dried;

And Maurice amongst the hay lies still

     And my knife is in his side.

 

‘My mother thinks us long away;

    ’Tis time the field were mown.

She had two sons at rising day,

     To-night she’ll be alone.

 

‘And here’s a bloody hand to shake,

     And oh, man, here’s good-bye;

We’ll sweat no more on scythe and rake,

    My bloody hands and I.

 

 ‘I wish you strength to bring you pride,

     And a love to keep you clean,

And I wish you luck, come Lammastide,

     At racing on the green.

 ‘Long for me the rick will wait,

    And long will wait the fold,

And long will stand the empty plate,

    And dinner will be cold.’ 

Comments on Construction: 

The pattern each verse follows

(with variations) is: 

˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘

   ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ /

˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘

   ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ / 

Comments on the Text:

        This is one of the few poems in

A Shropshire Lad that mentions Terrence,

who was meant to be a central figure of a

planned cycle of poems to be called:

"The Poems of Terence Hearsay". He is

also mentioned in poem LXII: "Terence,

this is stupid stuff." Housman must have

imagined a whole story with characters, but

gave it up at some point due to the difficulty

of creating a full story or perhaps realizing

that the material would be too scandalous

for the time. The Beatles similarly seemed to

have abandoned their idea of an album

about Sargent Pepper, due to similar diffi-

culties in creating and sticking to an am-

bitious and continuous story. It is a pity in

both cases. In this little poem we can al-

ready see a drama consisting of four

characters: the speaker, Terence, Maurice

and his mother, and we can even guess the

sort of relationships they have between

therm. The speaker seems more con-

cerned about Terence's future than his own,

which fits the theme of deep male friendship

often encountered in the collection. The

images of the empty plate, the bloody hands,

and Maurice lying with a knife in this side,

all create a vivid dramatic world, even if we

are missing pieces of the puzzle.

        The "Lammastride" mentioned is a

summer festival, pre-Christian and Celtic

in origin, I assume. The equivalent to the

Irish "Lughnasa", Shropshire being close

to Wales, it is no surprise that they would

have such celebrations. Horse racing

("racing on the green") seems to be part

of the activities.

assume horse racing

Scanning Poetry

      

    Scanning poetry is a bit of a mysterious

art. It is usually mentioned in textbooks and

poetry classes fleetingly, and you certainly

are not tested on it in school. It seems to not

be discussed much because people are un-

sure of how it is done. Examples of scansion

usually look something like this:

              / |  ˘     /     |    /     ˘  

            ‘Is my team ploughing, 

                    ˘   /  | ˘      /   |  ˘     /

                That I was used to drive 

               ˘      /  |   ˘      /    ˘ |    /  ˘

            And hear the harness jingle 

                    ˘     / |  ˘     /    |   ˘   /

                When I was man alive?’

 

    The little " ˘ " symbol over a syllable

stands for an unstressed syllable, the  “ / ”

slash mark indicates where there is a

stressed syllable. The first mark is called

a “breve” and the other mark is called a

“macron”. Various combinations of these

marks or feet have been given various

names in Greek (eg. " ˘ / " is called an

iamb, and "/ ˘ " is called a trochee). If

you have five Iambs in a line, it is called

“iambic pentameter” and so on.* All this

is purely academic and is of no use or

concern to a person creating poetry, it is

mostly a means of describing poems used

by non-poets for non-poets, and I present

it here only as an example of a method

of scanning poetry that I am aware of

and you might encounter. I have my own

method, but will use breves and macrons

in this blog post to illustrate patterns. All

a poet really needs to know is where the

stressed syllables are in a line of poetry.

I have come to this conclusion after try-

ing to scan  all of Housman’s Complete Poems

and finding that his poems with eight syllable

lines usually have two stressed syllables,

which seem optimal for retaining the lilting

musical quality most of his poetry has. His

poems with ten syllable lines gave me pause,

however (such as: “The Chestnut casts his

Flambeaux”, Diffugere Nives, and Easter 

Hymn). Were these meant to be exceptions

to all his other toe-tapping poems? I am sure

easy and conventional thing to do would be

to consider them iambic pentameter with a

stress on every second syllable, even though

this would not be in keeping with the rest

of Housman’s oeuvre with its strong

rhythm. I tried out three stresses, but even

that seemed to slow the reading down and

I could not definitely determine the third

stress. Eventually, I concluded that these

poems had to have two stresses too. Keep-

ing a beat is second nature to me, as I have

always had an interest in fiddle tunes and

folk music; music with a melody and a

regular beat. Though this sort of music is

not the most popular sort now, in the time

of Shakespeare, Gray, and Housman it was

the only form of popular music, and would

definitely influenced their poetry. Rather

plodding and turgid-sounding poems in

“iambic pentameter” suddenly become

much more lively and fun to read when you

find the correct stresses in their lines. I

remember reading somewhere that the

popularity of iambic pentameter in English

was due to the fact that it fits so well the

natural rhythm of spoken speech, which

presupposes that poets were aiming for such

an affect. If so, why did they bother writing

poetry at all, if the desired outcome was

something that did not sound like poetry?

     Determining for yourself where the

stress lies in a line an be tricky, but the

stresses are usually on important empha-

sized words in a line, once the pattern of

the stressed and unstressed syllables in the

poem is determined, scanning becomes

comes much easier. There are usually few

exceptions to the pattern of the poem,

usually just an extra syllable or a syllable

less, here and there.

Below I will provide some examples of

my scanning of various poems. I have

simply underlined the syllable that takes the

stress; unstressed syllables are left un-

marked. This is the system I use myself

when trying to find and note the stress of a

poem in a poetry book with a pencil. It takes

up less space than conventional symbols.

Tap your foot or rap the table with your fist

when reading the lines of a poem and you

come to an underlined stressed syllable to

get a sense of the rhythm of the poem. Note

that lines do not always end on a stressed

syllable.

There pass the careless people 

     That call their souls their own:

Here by the road I loiter,

     How idle and alone.

(Housman, Shropshire Lad XIV)

Pattern: 1)   ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘  (2)  ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ /  (repeat)

 

And if you 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.

(Housman, Shropshire Lad XLV)

Pattern: 1) ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘  (2)  / ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘ (repeat)

 

Bring, in this timeless grave to throw            

No cypress, sombre on the 

       snow;                      

Snap not from the bitter yew

His leaves that live December through;

(Housman, Shropshire Lad XLVI) 

Pattern: ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘

 

Shot? So quick, so clean an ending?              

    Oh that was right, lad, that was 

          brave;           

Yours was not an ill for mending

    ’Twas best to take it to the grave

(Housman, Shropshire Lad XLIV) 

Pattern:  ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘/ ˘ ˘ ˘

 

In my own shire, if I was sad,               

Homely comforters I had:                         

The earth, because my heart was sore,

Sorrowed for the son she bore;

(Housman, Shropshire Lad XLI) 

Pattern:  ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘

 

The curfew tolls the knell of parting 

      day,          

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the

      lea,               

The plowman homeward plods his

      weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness 

      and to me.

 

Now fades the glimm’ring landscape  

        on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his

       droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant 

       folds;

(Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard)

Pattern: ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘

 

When, in disgrace with fortune and 

       men’s eyes,    

I all alone beweep my outcast

       state,                          

And trouble deaf heaven with my

       bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse 

       my fate

(Shakespeare, Sonnet 29)

Pattern: ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘

 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s

        day?               

Thou art more lovely and more 

        temperate                      

Rough winds do shake the darlings 

        buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too 

        short a date.

(Shakespeare, Sonnet 18) 

Pattern: ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘

 

If in that Syrian garden, ages 

        slain,                             

You sleep, and know not you are

        dead in vain,             

Nor even in dreams behold how

        dark and bright

Ascends in smoke and fire by day 

         and night

The hate you died to quench and could 

         but fan,

Sleep well and see no morning, son 

        of man.

(Housman,  More Poems I) 

Pattern: ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘

 

West and away the wheels of darkness 

          roll,                 

   Day’s beamy banner up the east is

          bourne,                 

Spectres and fears, the nightmare and 

          her foal,

   Drown in the golden deluge of the

          morn

(Housman, Last Poems XXXVI)

Pattern: / ˘ ˘ ˘/ ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘

 

We for a certainty are not the 

          first                                

   Have sat in taverns while the 

          tempest hurled                

Their hopeful plans to emptiness

          and cursed

    Whatever brute and blackguard 

          made the world.

 

It is in truth iniquity on high

   To cheat our sentenced souls of

           aught they crave,

And mar the merriment as you and I,

    Fare on our long fool’s-errand to

           the grave.

(Housman, Last Poems IX) 

Pattern: ˘ / ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘/ ˘ ˘

-

You might have noticed in these

examples that the pattern sometimes causes

the stress to fall on a usually unstressed

part of a word in normal speech, and we

have to force the stress onto the syllable.

This is not a drawback of traditional poetry,

it is part of its charm. Poetry is not sup-

posed to sound like prose; we do not natural-

ly speak in rhyme either, after all, but we

accept it without thinking in our popular

songs. Keeping rhythm is a far more im-

portant thing than conventional pronun-

ciation in poetry. Before you start to write

a poem, I suggest that you first pick out

the rhythm pattern you want to fit your

rhymes into.

© C.A. MacLennan 2023

Videos of me reciting/singing poems can

be found at:

Poetry & Folklore - YouTube