Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 17 September 2026

XI A Shropshire Lad – A. E.Houseman

 Yonder see the morning blink:

  The sun is up, and up must I,

To wash and dress and eat and drink

And look at things and talk and think

  And work, and God knows why.

Oh often have I washed and dressed

  And what's to show for all my pain?

Let me lie abed and rest:

Ten thousand times I've done my best

  And all's to do again.

I did not start to read and appreciate poetry until some years ago I first heard Vancouver poet Gerry Gilbert. Before that I disliked poetry as in school we were given extra grade points if we memorized one. I must have had a learning disability that went beyond my dyslexia.

Now I have fun finding poems to match my photographs or scans. I have written here before how  my friend,Vancouver poet Jamie Reid (he often boasted he was a member of the Canadian Communist Party), inspired me to read Houseman’s Shropshire Lad. I am constantly reminded of him as one of my best roses is the English Rose Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’. When my other roses have given up the ghost this one keeps blooming. Is what you see here yet another “boring” scan of the rose?

Houseman’s poem above pretty well describes my life as an 84-year-old man who misses his Rosemary and finds some comfort in my female cat Niña. I don’t have to do anything on any given day except feed her and feed myself. My existential angst on knowing I am waiting to die is best explained in that line – And all’s that to do again.