A Shropshire Lad

A beacon burns from Clee to heaven; then, among cherry blossoms white for Easter, a young man counts the springs he has left—and finds only fifty.

Published in 1896, A. E. Housman’s poems roam a Shropshire of farm lanes, market towns and green hills, where spring arrives bright as a promise and the years slip quickly away. Their young men leave home for war, risk their hearts in love, and listen for the blackbird’s reminder that every road leads at last to rest. Tender, wry and shadowed by loss, these poems ask what it means to be young when time will not wait. What can a lad save for himself before the season turns?

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