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Let me consider the author of A Shropshire Lad,
     who didn’t come from Shropshire.
No, he came from Worcestershire, adjacent to
     another county which might well have been
     called Hopshire.
Still, AEH made quite a number out of names like
    Wenlock, Ludlow, the Wrekin and Uricon,
Which impresses this Amuricon.
Among his jolly themes are suicide, dead soldiers,
    the gallows and general unrequitedness,
So his country of the mind is brimming over
    with benightedness,
Even if slightly relieved by his tendency to notice
    chestnut, may and cherry blossom,
Unlike that other eminent contemporary and
    gloom-merchant, Old Possum.
While some have sought to compare him with
    the Wizard of Wessex, a writer rather more
    wordy,
Others belittle his plangent stanzas as Hardy-gurdy.
But, as verse goes, he definitely entered the realms
    of best-sellery,
Although hardly in the bedside reading league
    occupied by Agatha and Ellery
Or another wordsmith familiar with similar parts of
    the sceptered isle, PGW,
Who is a lot more fun and less likely to trouble you.
Strangely, for someone who used ‘lad ’so much
    in his lines, AEH was more donnish than laddish –
As well as classically saddish.