Graham Galer revisits A.E. Housman’s poem ‘Into my Heart an air that kills’.
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
This poem, with no title, comes in the collection of 63 poems by A.E. Housman published as A Shropshire Lad in 1896. The whole collection, bucolic in tone, is suffused with a sense of loss, and it has been suggested that it represents ‘a cry against the wanton and needless loss of young men’s lives – as Queen Victoria expanded “her” Empire’. Perhaps, then, its later popularity spoke to those millions who harboured feelings of otherwise inexpressible loss after the shattering events of two world wars.
The poem, which I have known for years, has always struck me for the sheer beauty and cogency of the words: ‘blue remembered hills’, ‘land of lost content’, and the last two lines: ‘the happy highways where I went and cannot come again’. What an imaginative and resonant choice of words! So many overlaying multiple images! From many places close to where I now live, the long silhouette of the Malvern Hills can be seen snaking on the horizon. It is a familiar sight as one travels towards Tewkesbury or Cheltenham appearing, according to the weather conditions, bluish or green, in contrast to the Cotswold hills nearer by, which are always indisputably green, with patches of brown where the fields are ploughed. And looming over my house is the substantial shape of Bredon Hill, an outcrop of the Cotswolds, perhaps more cultivated than most of the Malvern Hills and so greener, but becoming bluish with distance.
While ‘blue remembered hills’ convey a visual memory, the ‘land of lost content’ conjures memory of a place and time where in the past the poet lived a stable, comfortable life, and ‘the happy highways … cannot come again’ recall his activities and relationships during that period of contentment, now felt to be irretrievably lost. Housman had a strong sense of place in respect of Shropshire – his memorial is in Ludlow churchyard – although he did not come from there but from further south, in Worcestershire, in which the Malvern Hills are partly situated. In fact Housman, a formidable scholar, spent nearly all his later life in London and Cambridge, where he died in 1936. Perhaps the poet, in this and other poems, expresses a sense of groundedness which he possessed in the past and feels that he possesses no longer.
For myself, there was a period many years ago when the poem frequently came to mind as I struggled to cope with an unexpected and devastating loss. I carried about with me a handwritten copy, which for a long time helped me to grieve as I read and reflected on it. The poem gave me words to help me define the nature of my loss, and it helped to move me towards acceptance. In this way the period of grieving gradually passed, and I found that it was possible to build a new and happy life, with new relationships and the refashioning of old ones. So the past loss did not mean for me that new ‘happy highways’ and ‘lands of content’ could not be found. Furthermore it was my experience that former ways could be reimagined, as memory, frequently revisited, found different ways of looking at past experiences. In this way ‘blue remembered hills’, though recalled with sadness initially, eventually became treasured and much-loved memories of the past, continually refreshed in the present.
In this poem the poet is powerfully expressing a sense of loss, but is it unrealistic to feel that, as with my own experience, he is beginning to use memory to work through his grief, towards restoration of the ‘lost content’ he earlier experienced? I am no neuroscientist but I believe that memory, every time that it is recalled and revisited, becomes reinterpreted, and perhaps modified. In this way I believe that – maybe with the assistance of poetry – we can be helped towards a reimagining of our past, and so towards the potential for restoration of contentment in our lives.
Graham Galer, now in his 80s, is an erratic churchgoer, though a supporter of the village Anglican church.