Shropshire Lad - Parodies

Parodies

The uniform style and tone of A Shropshire Lad make it an easy target for parody, as in this example by Humbert Wolfe:

When lads have done with labour

In Shropshire, one will cry

"Let's go and kill a neighbour,"

And t'other answers "Aye!"

So this one kills his cousins,

And that one kills his dad;

And, as they hang by dozens

At Ludlow, lad by lad,

Each of them one-and-twenty,

All of them murderers,

The hangman mutters: "Plenty

Even for Housman's verse."

and this, by Hugh Kingsmill, which, according to Cyril Alington writing in Poets at Play, Housman described as 'the only good parody' of A Shropshire Lad:

What, still alive at twenty-two,

A clean upstanding chap like you?

Why, if your throat is hard to slit,

Slit your girl's and swing for it!

Like enough you won't be glad

When they come to hang you, lad,

But bacon's not the only thing

That's cured by hanging from a string.

When the blotting pad of night

Sucks the latest drop of light,

Lads whose job is still to do

Shall whet their knives and think of you.