Monday 16 April 2007

LAND OF LOST CONTENT

Spurred by a recent comment of mine, Ms. Melancholy and her spouse walked at Easter in some of the finest country in England – the Craven hills - and took some smashing pics. Her delightful blog and resulting comment thread about this brought back nostalgic memories of my own many happy times among the windswept Pennines, and this provides a splendid opportunity to post one of my favourite poems in the burrow. A.E. Housman wrote this about his beloved Shropshire, but for each of us it evokes our own personal ‘lands of lost content’:


“Into my heart an air that kills
  From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
  What spires, what farms are those?
 
“That is the land of lost content,
  I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
  And cannot come again.”



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful Anti.
My Appalachia.

anticant said...

Ranger, if you don't know Housman's "A Shropshire Lad", get it immediately. It's a poetic 'Must'.

zola a social thing said...

Come again?

Bodwyn Wook said...

[Since we are 'doing' poesis here, I am taking the liberty of re-posting (below) one of the peerless treasures of /my/ vernacular wit, which I first stuck into the running ruction as between Aunty & Mr S, over in 'Anticant'....

[Otherwise, as to classical and, indeed, archetypal /verse/, well, as Navarth says (/Palace of Love/, Jack Vance, 1967), the following couplet /does/ ring the gong of inevitability to the close hearer, that is the mark of, precisely, the aeternal:

['A Farting horse will never tire,
'A farting man's the man to hire....'

[I Ask you:

[WHERE Is the like, to-day?

AND, Now, moving right along:]


'A Bad day'? 'Easily irritated'? You know, it may be on account of all the fool drinking that gets done over there! Everyone seemingly is either in a YOB-like state of intoxication -- or else bloody hung-over & crabby as bastards! Here is my (distinctly American!) homage to AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, here at home in the heartland....

http://oldunclecrow.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/a-real-meeting/#more-43

A Careful reading should reveal that there /are/, indeed, unforeseen gifts & treasures to be found in Sobriety -- at least the way she is done, here! Drily,

Wook

Anonymous said...

He is crazy. Simple.
However, normal crazy.

Ms Melancholy said...

Thanks, Anticant. Will post some more pictures for you soon, but I promise I will take these ones myself! (The others were culled from the web, and acknowledged.)