“Farewell to barn and stack and tree” is
A Shropshire Lad. You can hear me reciting at:
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
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