In my own shire, if I was sad | The Housman Society

	XLI

	In my own shire, if I was sad,
	Homely comforters I had:			Q
	The earth, because my heart was sore,			Q
	Sorrowed for the son she bore;
	And standing hills, long to remain,	5
	Shared their short-lived comrade’s pain.
	And bound for the same bourn as I,		C
	On every road I wandered by,
	Trod beside me, close and dear,
	The beautiful and death-struck year:	10
	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	15
	Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,
	And like a skylit water stood		C
	The bluebells in the azured wood.

	Yonder, lightening other loads,
	The seasons range the country roads,	20
	But here in London streets I ken		C	Q
V	No such helpmates, only men;			Q
	And these are not in plight to bear,
	If they would, another’s care.
	They have enough as ’tis: I see	25
	In many an eye that measures me			Q
	The mortal sickness of a mind
	Too unhappy to be kind.
	Undone with misery, all they can
	Is to hate their fellow man;	30
	And till they drop they needs must still			Q
	Look at you and wish you ill.

Key: V: Textual Variation. C: Commentary. Q: Question. Glossary

ASL XLI “In my own shire, if I was sad”

Top ▲ Glossary

Line	Word	Glossary
2	homely	Having a simple, unpretentious, and warm-hearted manner
7	bourn	A destination or boundary between one place or one thing and another
16	Lady-smocks	Common name for cuckoo-flowers (Cardamine pratensis)
18	azured	Deep blue, like the colour of a clear sky; also coloured blue on a coat of arms
20	range	To move freely across, through, or back and forth within a particular area
21	ken	To know somebody or something
23	plight	State of mind or mood (OED, used 1726)

Top ▲ Commentary

Line	Commentary
	Date: Oct – Dec 1895
7	In Shakespeare’s Hamlet (III, I, 81-2), death is described as, “The undiscovered country from whose bourn\| No traveller returns.“
17	skylit: The Oxford English Dictionary cites this as the first use of the word
21	This is another poem from the selection that contrasts the experience of London with that of Shropshire; in this case the contrast is emphasized by the two (unequal) stanzas.
Meter	Alternate lines of eight and seven syllables, rhymed as couplets.

Top ▲ Variations

Line	Text	Textual variation
22		helpmates] comrades

Top ▲ Questions

Line	Question
2	What is the effect of the shorter, even-numbered lines upon the mood of the poem?
3	Which features of the natural world act as “homely comforters” in the first stanza? Why do you think these particular examples are chosen?
21	How are these comforters contrasted in the second stanza?
22	Does the phrase “only men” suggest a misanthropic personality on the part of the narrator? What other evidence is there for this?
26	How do you interpret the phrase, “many an eye that measures me“?
31-32	Why do you think the poet ends the poem with two entirely monosyllabic lines?