Is My Team Ploughing?

‘Is my team ploughing,
  That I was used to drive         
And hear the harness jingle   
  When I was man alive?’         

Ay, the horses trample,           
  The harness jingles now;       
No change though you lie under          
  The land you used to plough.

Some A.E. Housman for you today. Above are the first two verses of 'Is My Team Ploughing?', Poem XXVII from A Shropshire Lad, published in 1896. You can read it in full here at The Poetry Foundation, and below is a video of a performance by Dan Kempson of the beautiful setting by George Butterworth.

Butterworth composed the his settings for a selection from A Shropshire Lad in 1911 - 12, before the start of the First World War. He died only a few years later, aged just 31, at the Battle of the Somme, and his music is a poignant reminder of what is lost in war.




A thought: is the setting of poems to music a precursor to the filmpoem?