mental and emotional temper, vibrating equally whether
the theme dealt with is ruin or defeat, or some great tragic
crisis of spirit, or with moods and ardours of pure enjoyment
and simplicities of feeling. Scarcely has any modern book
of poems shown so sure a touch of genius in this respect:
the magic, in a continuous glow saturating the substance of
every picture and motive with its own peculiar essence.

What has been called the "cynical bitterness" of Mr.
Housman's poems, is really nothing more than his ability
to etch in sharp tones the actualities of experience. The
poet himself is never cynical; his joyousness is all too
apparent in the very manner and intensity of expression.
The "lads" of Ludlow are so human to him, the hawthorn and
broom on the Severn shores are so fragrant with associations,
he cannot help but compose under a kind of imaginative
wizardry of exultation, even when the immediate subject is
grim or grotesque. In many of these brief, tense poems the
reader confronts a mask, as it were, with appalling and
distorted lineaments; but behind it the poet smiles, perhaps
sardonically, but smiles nevertheless. In the real countenance
there are no tears or grievances, but a quizzical,
humorous expression which shows, when one has torn the
subterfuge away, that here is a spirit whom life may menace
with its contradictions and fatalities, but never dupe with
its circumstance and mystery.

All this quite points to, and partly explains, the charm
of the poems in _ A Shropshire Lad _. The fastidious care with
which each poem is built out of the simplest of technical