On Wenlock Edge

      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 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:
      Today the Roman and his trouble
      Are ashes under Uricon.

      A. E. Housman, 1896

      Geography, History, and Metaphor in A. E. Housman's "On Wenlock Edge"

      A. E. Housman's "On Wenlock Edge" makes such heavy use of geographical and historical allusions that the modern American reader who has never travelled in England needs a bit of a explanation in order to make sense of the poem. Once, however, the allusions are sufficiently explained, it becomes quite apparent that here is one more of Housman's metaphorical commentaries on the darker side of life.

      To begin with, the reader needs to know something about the local geography. Wenlock Edge, for example, is a well-defined ridge about twenty miles long. It is even today rather heavily forested, and in Housman's day was completely covered by trees. To someone visiting the old Roman ruins of Uricon near Shrewsbury in southwestern England, Wenlock Edge seems to run from horizon to horizon like a wall. Visible also from this same area is the Wrekin, a forested hill peeping over the ridge. Near the base of the hill, the Severn River runs by on its way into Wales. When storms roll into southwestern England from the Irish Sea, the effect of the wind on the trees is spectacular, and evidently the shredded foliage will sometimes come floating down the Severn River in great quantities. As Housman says, "the wood's in trouble."

      The Roman town of Uricon had been an important Roman military encampment for several centuries, and then its troubles began. As Anglo -Saxon invaders and local British tribal leaders began to exert more and more pressure on the Romans, it became too difficult a place to defend so the Romans abandoned the town in 431 A.D. and moved about eight miles away to the site of the modern city of Shrewsbury. It wasn't very long until some British tribal people burned the old Roman city to the ground. To a Roman standing in the ruins of Uricon watching a storm whipping the trees about on Wenlock Edge, the scene could suggest the Roman's personal cares or even his larger worry about the beginning of the end of a way of life that had flourished since Julius Caesar conquered Britain about five decades before the birth of Christ.

      So the gale that "plies the saplings double" is metaphorically equivalent to the worries and troubles that have always faced mankind: "the tree of man was never quiet; / Then was the Roman, now 'tis I." And now the Roman and his city are in ruin; and that suggests no happier outcome for the speaker than the Roman had. Just as Uricon witnesssed gales of change, so too will the speaker's world pass from the scene. Here is old Housman moaning and groaning once again about the darker realities of life.

      The geography and the history of the area around Shrewsbury have provided Housman with yet another source of gloomy metaphor. As he wrote in "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff," "luck's a chance, but trouble's sure." And "On Wenlock Edge" is simply making that same point again.