A Shropshire Lad, Poem XXXVI

Housman’s poem is anything but formally experimental. It is formally, in fact, a throwback, a nostalgic evocation of a kind of poem that defined poetry for generations. “Poem XXXVI” invokes a traditional rural song, that is a folk genre, known as the ballad. As with traditional ballads, Housman’s poem is straightforward, direct, dispensing with elaborate language ornamentation and complex symbolism to deal directly and sympathetically with a universal human emotion—in this case, leaving behind a love. The ballad traditionally is often a narrative, a story, as it is here, set to tightly rhymed lines, in this case ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH. The clear predictability of the formal rhyming structure reflects the traditional ballad as a sung rather than spoken verse, the rhymes assisting in memorizing the lines as balladeers would move town to town to entertain people. Thus, the poem uses a refrain (“White in the moon the long road lies”) to create the feel of a folk song. Indeed, as with many of the poems collected in The Shropshire Lad, “Poem XXXVI” has been set to music.

Typical of ballads, the poem, despite its compressed form, explores a wide emotional range, from tenderness to anxiety, without actually indulging excessive emotions. There are few adjectives, few adverbs to clutter the directness of the ballad’s delivery. Rather, the form itself creates a feeling that is subtle, indirect. The poem uses rich long vowels (particularly i’s and e’s) and soft sibilant consonants (particularly s’s and l’s) to create the sense of quiet fear that builds in the narrator as he departs his love under the moonlit night sky. In the refrain, for instance, the phrase “long road lies / That leads me from my love,” with its complex weave of long vowels and drawn-out consonants, rewards a slow and emphatic delivery that, in turn, captures formally the feel of a road stretching ahead.