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Stephen Foulkes and David Bednall: Shropshire Lads: Songs to the Poems of AE Housman

By C. Michael Bailey

'TERENCE, this is stupid stuff: / You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, / To see the rate you drink your beer. With those words, poet AE Housman begins his celebrated Poem LXII from his famous collection A Shropshire Lad. This particular poem contains the admonition that, ..."malt does more than Milton can / To justify God's ways to man." Yet none of this appears in the present recording of Housman's ...