Featured Poem: On Wenlock Edge

A.E. Houseman's poem 'On Wenlock Edge ...' (1896) is one of my favourite poems, not least for its description of submission to the weather and the 'anger' of the wind. That sensation is one of the most exhilarating. In this poem Houseman makes a point of connecting his own moment with a continuity of human life around the Wrekin, but he avoids soft-hearted sentimentalism, choosing instead to focus on transitoriness. The 'wind through woods in riot' is no less than life itself. After a weekend in which Britain has been battered by wind, rain and, in my case, pantomime, here is a poem that celebrates our need to be rooted in place, yet takes a clear-eyed view of what good it will do us. It also contains one of the best first lines in all of English poetry.

'On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble'

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

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Posted by Chris Routledge, Powered by Qumana