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I wish to analyze here a poem written by an adolescent. The poem is one by A. E. Housman, which he wrote in his fifteenth year. He produced it for a play on which he and his younger brothers and sisters were collaborating: The Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey. It was a song to be sung by Lady Jane in prison while she awaited execution.2 I shall try to show how many major fantasies of Housman's were involved in this poem, what their sources were in his life, and to what extent they anticipate A Shropshire Lad, as well as other later poems. Let me, however, first briefly indicate the main formative events of Housman's early years.
Alfred Housman (born March 26, 1859) was the eldest of seven children.3 Four of his younger brothers and sisters were born before he had reached the age of five. He claimed that he could remember the baptism of his brother Robert when he was two, and that this had revived in him the memory of his own baptism. During the ceremony the thought had struck him: "But this is something I've seen before; only then they were doing it to me" (L. Housman, 1938, p. 20). This, which we may take as a screen memory, probably has condensed in it a great many early experiences, where the eldest child, so quickly superseded, had to watch his mother doing things for the younger ones which had briefly been his prerogatives. He must have felt great resentment toward his mother and strong aggressive feelings toward the little brothers and sisters, but there