In my Own Shire, if I was Sad (by A.E. Housman).

This poem is number 41 of A.E.

Housman's A Shropshire Lad:

 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;

And standing hills, long to remain,

Shared their short-lived comrade’s pain.

And bound for the same bourn as I,

On every road I wandered by,

Trod beside me, close and dear,

The beautiful and death-struck year:

Whether in the woodland brown

I heard the beechnut rustle down,

And saw the purple crocus pale

Flower about the autumn dale;

Or littering far the fields of May

Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,

And like a skylit water stood

The bluebells in the azure wood.

Yonder, lightening other loads,

The seasons range the country roads,

But here in London streets I ken

No such helpmates, only men; 

And these are not in plight to bear,

If they would, another’s care.

They have enough as ’tis: I see  

In many an eye that measures me

The mortal sickness of a mind

Too unhappy to be kind.

Undone with misery, all they can

Is to hate their fellow man;

And till they drop they needs must still

Look at you and wish you ill. 

The poem with the stressed syllables

underlined:

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;

And standing hills, long to remain,

Shared their short-lived comrade’s pain.

And bound for the same bourn as I,

On every road I wandered by,

Trod beside me, close and dear,

The beautiful and death-struck year:

Whether in the woodland brown

I heard the beechnut rustle down,

And saw the purple crocus pale

Flower about the autumn dale;

Or littering far the fields of May

Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,

And like a skylit water stood

The bluebells in the azure wood.

  Yonder, lightening other loads,

The seasons range the country roads,

But here in London streets I ken

No such helpmates, only men; 

And these are not in plight to bear,

If they would, another’s care.

They have enough as ’tis: I see  

In many an eye that measures me

The mortal sickness of a mind

Too unhappy to be kind.

Undone with misery, all they can

Is to hate their fellow man;

And till they drop they needs must still

Look at you and wish you ill. 

Analysis:

In the first part of the poem, Housman

anthropomorphises nature to an almost

Disney-like degree, having us believe

that nature feels so keenly the speaker's

moods. Nature in this poem is the

close friend that appears or is spoken

in his other poems. In the second half

of the poem, the speaker finds him-

self more lonely in a London than

he felt when he a physically alone

with nature. Its citizens are not just

tormented, like the speaker and so

many other characters in Housman's

poems, they are evil beings “undone

with misery” and “too unhappy to be

kind”. 

“Undone with misery” contains four

unstressed syllables after “done”, and

can require some practice to recite

smoothly aloud.

© C.A. MacLennan 2025

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