Is My Team Ploughing

IS MY TEAM PLOUGHING

"Is my team ploughing,
    That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
    When I was man alive?"

Ay, the horses trample,
    The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
    The land you used to plough.

'Is football playing
    Along the river shore.
With lads to chase the leather,
    Now I stand up no more?'

Ay, the ball is flying,
    The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
    Stands up to keep the goal.

"Is my girl happy,
    That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
    As she lies down at eve?"

Ay, she lies down lightly,
    She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
    Be still, my lad, and sleep.

"Is my friend hearty,
    Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
    A better bed than mine?"

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
    I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
    Never ask me whose. ^[1]

"Is My Team Ploughing" is a poem by A. E. Housman, published as number XXVII in his 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad . ^[2] It is a conversation between a dead man and his still living friend. Toward the end of the poem it is implied that the friend is now with the girl left behind when the narrator died. ^{[3] [4]}

The text, along with other poems from A Shropshire Lad , has been famously set to music by several English composers, including George Butterworth ( Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad ), Ralph Vaughan Williams ( On Wenlock Edge ) and Ivor Gurney. ^{[5] : 640} Vaughan Williams omitted the third and fourth verses, to Housman's annoyance, writing years later that he felt “a composer has a perfect right artistically to set any portion of a poem he chooses provided he does not actually alter the sense” of it. “I also feel,” he added, “that a poet should be grateful to anyone who fails to perpetuate such lines as: “‘The goal stands up, the Keeper / Stands up to keep the Goal.’” ^{[6] [5] : 235–236}

References

1. Housman, A. E. (1906). A Shropshire Lad. New York: John Lane Company. pp.  38-40.
2. Housman, A. E. (1994). The works of A.E. Housman : with an introduction and bibliography. Wordsworth Editions Ltd. pp. 42–43. ISBN   978-1-85326-411-5.
3. Boulton, Marjorie (17 June 2014). The Anatomy of Poetry (Routledge Revivals). Routledge. p. 88. ISBN   978-1-317-93650-3.
4. Brockliss, William; Chaudhuri, Pramit; Lushkov, Ayelet Haimson; Wasdin, Katherine (8 December 2011). Reception and the Classics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Classical Tradition. Cambridge University Press. p. 86. ISBN   978-1-139-50231-3.
5. Banfield, Stephen (1989). Sensibility and English Song; Critical Studies of the Early Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9780521379441.
6. Stuart Wright, Sewanee Review, 118, No.1. Winter 2010