Blogger's silent poetry...

This was a thing, back in the early days of blogging. Every Candlemass/Groundhog's Day/St. Bridget's day bloggers silently shared a favorite bit of poetry*

I am pretty sure I've posted something from A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman  before, but probably not this poem. Shropshire Lad is an interesting book of short poems. Some of them are simple slices of life, some capture that sudden, hit-you-in-the-solar-plexus sense of tragedy  (To An Athlete Dying Young is probably the best known one). But a few are wryly comic, and that is what I choose today:

XVIII Oh When I was in Love with You

OH, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they ’ll say that I
Am quite myself again.

I like this poem because I think there's an element of truth to it. I think there's not a one of us, wanting someone to "notice" us who hasn't either cleaned up a little better, or behaved a little more refined, or (as was my usual case) dressed with a bit more care and consideration. And when, as usually happened to me, I found out, "he already has a girlfriend"....well, then the sloppy old skirts or baggy sweaters came back out.

There is also a song-setting of this (There are several of Housman's poems are set to music). Here's one rendition of it:



There's another, more "modern style" music setting of it (by Ronald Corp rather than Ralph Vaughn Williams) but I do not like it as well.

(*Am I starting to take on a role of a blogging elder? I'm certainly not as long at it as some are, but I'm also longer than many. And of course there's also the whole "the cool kids have moved on" idea....but I like to imagine that someday a whole new crowd will discover the pleasures of blogging, of being freed from that 140-character constraint, or need to find something atmospheric to photograph, or some kind of reaction .gif to reblog....)