A translucent blue ribbon winding around three small rounded clay hills on a pale surface.

Original artwork, not a still

A Shropshire Lad XL

A. E. Housman

Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those?

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

Housman's speaker feels a wistful pang from a distant country he can see only in memory. Blue hills, spires and farms rise up as questions, half-recognised and painfully far away. Nostalgia here arrives like a sweet poison.

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