Is My Team Ploughing
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
"Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?"
Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.
'Is football playing
Along the river shore.
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?'
Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.
"Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?"
Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.
"Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?"
Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
"Is My Team Ploughing" is a poem by A. E. Housman, published as number XXVII in his 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad.{{Cite book |last=Housman |first=A. E. |url=https://archive.org/details/worksofaehousman0000hous/mode/2up?q=%22Is+My+Team+Ploughing%22+XXVII |title=The works of A.E. Housman : with an introduction and bibliography |date=1994 |publisher=Wordsworth Editions Ltd. |isbn=978-1-85326-411-5 |pages=42–43}} It is a conversation between a dead man and his still living friend. Toward the end of the poem it is implied that the friend is now with the girl left behind when the narrator died.{{Cite book |last=Boulton |first=Marjorie |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pnbXAwAAQBAJ |title=The Anatomy of Poetry (Routledge Revivals) |date=2014-06-17 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-93650-3 |page=88 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last1=Brockliss |first1=William |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KA1ZevfF75wC |title=Reception and the Classics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Classical Tradition |last2=Chaudhuri |first2=Pramit |last3=Lushkov |first3=Ayelet Haimson |last4=Wasdin |first4=Katherine |date=2011-12-08 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-50231-3 |pages=86 |language=en}}
The text, along with other poems from A Shropshire Lad, has been famously set to music by several English composers, including George Butterworth (Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad), Ralph Vaughan Williams (On Wenlock Edge) and Ivor Gurney.{{cite book|last=Banfield|first=Stephen|title=Sensibility and English Song; Critical Studies of the Early Twentieth Century|year=1989|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521379441|url=http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item1138264/?site_locale=en_GB}}{{rp|640}} Vaughan Williams omitted the third and fourth verses, to Housman's annoyance, writing years later that he felt “a composer has a perfect right artistically to set any portion of a poem he chooses provided he does not actually alter the sense” of it. “I also feel,” he added, “that a poet should be grateful to anyone who fails to perpetuate such lines as: “‘The goal stands up, the Keeper / Stands up to keep the Goal.’”Stuart Wright, Sewanee Review, 118, No.1. Winter 2010{{rp|235–236}}