Poem of the Week – On the Idle Hill of Summer by A.E. Housman

A.E. Housman was a classics scholar who spent most of his career lecturing at illustrious universities. Despite dying in 1936, he remains an authority on Roman authors such as Juvenal and Lucan and is remembered as one of the best and most impressive scholars of his time.

Housman brought his authoritative academic knowledge of poetic structures and styles to bear on his own compositions. His best-loved work, the cycle of poems, A Shropshire Lad, was an enormous success when it was published in 1896. Through its simple vocabulary and eloquent sentimentality, Housman displayed his love of English rural life and described the existential predicaments a bucolic existence evinces.

This week’s selection, On the idle hill of summer, is an extract from that cycle. Due to its unintended relevance to the arrival of war in Europe in 1914, it was chosen as the title for the first episode of the BBC’s celebrated 1964 The Great War documentary series. 

Considering the lamentable events that are taking place in Ukraine, Housman’s lyric below about the coming of a conflict has a tragic germaneness.

A Shropshire Lad 35: On the Idle Hill of Summer (1896)

On the idle hill of summer,
      Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
      Drumming like a noise in dreams.

Far and near and low and louder
      On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
      Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten
      Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
      None that go return again.

Far the calling bugles hollo,
      High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
      Woman bore me, I will rise.

Enjoyed this week’s poem by A.E. Housman? Find more poems of the week here.