On moonlight heath and lonesome bank
The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
Fast by the four cross ways.
A careless shepherd once would keep
His flocks by moonlight there.
And high above the glimmering sheep
A dead man stood on air.
They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail
The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
To men that die at morn.
There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail tonight,
Or wakes as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right,
Than most that sleep outside.
And naked to the hangman’s noose
The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
Than strangling in a string.
And sharp the link of life will snap,
And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a lad
As treads upon the land.
So here I’ll watch the night and wait
And see the morning shine,
When he will hear the stroke of eight
And not the stroke of nine;
And wish my friend as sound a sleep
As lads I did not know,
That shepherded the moonlit sheep
A hundred years ago.
The poem with the stressed
syllables underlined:
On moonlight heath and lonesome bank
The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
Fast by the four cross ways.
A careless shepherd once would keep
His flocks by moonlight there.
And high above the glimmering sheep
A dead man stood on air.
They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail
The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
To men that die at morn.
There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail tonight,
Or wakes as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right,
Than most that sleep outside.
And naked to the hangman’s noose
The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
Than strangling in a string.
And sharp the link of life will snap,
And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a lad
As treads upon the land.
So here I’ll watch the night and wait
And see the morning shine,
When he will hear the stroke of eight
And not the stroke of nine;
And wish my friend as sound a sleep
As lads I did not know,
That shepherded the moonlit sheep
A hundred years ago.
Analysis:
The poem is interesting for the variation
in the unaccented syllables at the end of
lines: "glimmering sheep" and "Shrews-
bury jail" are an accented syllable
followed by three unaccented syllables.
It seems to work fine in the poem, but
it is an exception to Housman's usual
practice.
The poem itself is a romanticization of
working-class youth. Housman mentions
"us" as being hanged, by which he means
working class youth. The careers of
Montgomery Clift and Marlo Brando
were built on the such romanticizations
of working class youth. The characters
they portrayed at the beginning of their
careers, their most popular roles and the
ones that made them stars, were rough
and kind-of-stupid working class youths.
Did Housman hang around much with
these types? I doubt it, people were
extremely snobby in those days, but
looking across the social gap, Housman
was able to imagine some sort of ex-
ceptional friendship that existed
between these types.
© C.A. MacLennan 2024
You can see a video of me reciting/
singing this poem at:
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