He achieved success in his own day as a composer of choral works such as The Forsaken Merman (1895), Intimations of Immortality (which he conducted at Leeds Festival in 1907), and The Passion of Christ (1914) but is now chiefly remembered for his song cycles such as Maud (after Tennyson, 1898) and the first known setting (1904) of A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad.
The text, along with other poems from A Shropshire Lad, has been famously set to score by several English composers, including George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Ivor Gurney.
The poem, which ended with a - presumably satirical - reminder to "scorn the counsel" of "the guardian friend", proved both prophetic and influential; the former in anticipating Sir John's career, and the latter in influencing A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad.
A. E. Housman referred to the town as "Uricon" in his poem "On Wenlock Edge" in A Shropshire Lad.
Shropshire | Element Lad | Willey, Shropshire | A Shropshire Lad | Whitchurch, Shropshire | Shropshire Union Canal | River Rea, Shropshire | River Clun, Shropshire | Ludford, Shropshire | A Lad from Old Ireland | Hopton Castle, Shropshire | Barrow, Shropshire | Wrexham & Shropshire | Whittington, Shropshire | Tong, Shropshire | Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company | Shropshire (UK Parliament constituency) | Shropshire Hills | River Perry, Shropshire | Copthorne, Shropshire | Bromfield, Shropshire | Battlefield, Shropshire | Woolston, north Shropshire | Wellington (Shropshire) (UK Parliament constituency) | Tibberton, Shropshire | The Unlikely Lad | St Winifred's Well, Woolston, north Shropshire | South Shropshire | Shropshire (sheep) | Shropshire Premier Cricket League |
Most importantly, like McGonagall, she was drawn to themes of accident, disaster, and sudden death; as has been said of A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, in her pages you can count the dead and wounded.
Last Poems (1922) is the second and last of the two volumes of poems A. E. Housman published during his lifetime - the first, and better-known, being A Shropshire Lad (1896).
It can be heard at the very end of Ghetto Thang on De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising album, and also during A Shropshire Lad (at 1:27) by Half Man Half Biscuit.