Press Cuttings

Lament of the Shropshire Lad

AS INCREASING numbers of country-dwellers lament the headlong rush of progress and development, fears continue to grow that the rural tranquillity of Shropshire will be lost forever.

Although the qualities that make Shropshire unique are well documented and prove an irresistible draw to the thousands who visit each year, until now, Shropshire in poetry has been almost exclusively the preserve of AE Housman and his most memorable work, The Shropshire Lad.

But now, one more recent past resident of the county Adrian Done, has ensured that the qualities of rural Shropshire that made his childhood so memorable, will, even if they are lost to future generations, at least not be forgotten.

One of the poems, Remember Red is a response to A E Housman's 'The Shropshire Lad'. In Remember Red the past is recalled with an awareness of what had happened elsewhere during those war years. Thus there is none of Housman's feelings of loss, rather a sense of indebtedness to those who kept his childhood free and safe.

Remember Red and his other works feature in A View From a Small Hill and other poems….published today. Together they celebrate in different ways, what in the eyes of one small boy was a unique and much cherished wartime childhood.

Done's View from a Small Hill and other poems is about that childhood innocence. The poems reflect a gratitude for having been young in one of Britain's most cherished landscapes and, despite the privations of war, revelling in a freedom that children of today are increasingly denied, a childhood safe and secure but also with the joyful sense of real liberation….

Done was born in 1932 and brought up in Wem. His parents and grandparents spent their lives there and in nearby villages to the south

Most of them are written about Shropshire and a map showing the places mentioned in the poems is available by clicking here!

Below is a selection of some of the shorter poems:

Remember Red

Here in a Shropshire fieldland
where for me the world began
the poplars stand and tremble
in a world arcadian

from far fields the curlew calls
to westward-daring children

who fear no cold exposure
on new land, green and open

the Roden stream meanders
and the inclined child surveys
unshadowed regions, intent
on an infantry field day

before the sentinel trees
a shining plain of water
cannot deny for long these
territorial seekers

no brook too broad for leaping
no high rocking rookery
no hedge too dense for breaching
nor moorhen's island safety

venturing the plashy land
of alder trees and sedge brush
finding snipe eggs, sepia stained
amidst the common spike rush

to cavalier children
defenceless, mere souvenir
when the vexed and white-faced leaves
strained to hear Wem bells all clear

here our world of found content
ended, stopped by some unease
attempting no salient
into the next field

that year of a falling
world that took those,
who strove to hold the field
and keep children indifferent

and who cannot come again,
to the air that kills
to the last field
red remembered

Done said when writing the poems 'The Wem of my childhood, its streets and lanes, buildings, river, brooks and fields, is even now perfectly clear in my mind, as though learnt by heart like poetry. '