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| Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad'' & Peter Trower - 3 September 2026 |
With Rue My
Heart is Laden – A Shropshire Lad - A.E. Housman With rue my heart is laden
For golden
friends I had,
For many a
rose-lipt maiden
And many a
lightfoot lad.
By brooks too
broad for leaping
The lightfoot
boys are laid;
The rose-lipt
girls are sleeping
In fields
where roses fade.
In the 80s and early 90s a group of us (writers,
editors, photographers, artists, poets,
strippers, novelists, etc) would meet for lunch at the Railway Club every
Thursday. Such was for me the importance of this gathering that I tried to avoid
accepting free-lance jobs that would interfere.
We had four poets that often attended; they were Peter
Trower, Gerry Gilbert, Evelyn Lau and Jamie Reid. Reid affirmed he was a member
of the Canadian Communist Party.
Peter Trower was often called our Logging Poet. It was
he who introduced me to A.E. Housman and particularly his A Shropshire Lad.
In my rose garden in today’s date, 3 September, 2026
only one rose is in bloom. It is in my back lane garden. It is an English Rose,
thus it is remontant. This means that it blooms more than once. In many respects
it is one of two or three of my best roses. It is fragrant and one of its lovely
characteristics is that its new leaves are bright dark red.