A Shropshire Lad, Poem XXXVI

The poem takes place at the intersection of the familiar and the new, the known and the unknown. It is at once exhilarating and terrifying. Given that the poem takes place on the threshold of some unnamed and nonspecific adventure, “Poem XXXVI” sustains an uneasiness over what that adventure might entail. The narrator never shares significant specifics about his departure, only that he is leaving a place that has come to be a reassuring environment and a person he defines as his love. The poem develops a sense of forward motion, the footsteps moving resolutely if uncertainly away from home and through the dust of the country road but not heading toward a specific destination. That creates in the poem its sense of uncertainty. Yes, the possibility of leaving the familiar can create a feeling of heightened expectation, even anticipation of a new adventure, a new world opening up.

The poem, however, refuses to invest the movement away from the familiar with anything but a cloaking feeling of heightened concern. The dilemma, underscored in Stanza 3 in the debate between the head and the heart, gives the poem its sense of universality. This is more than a coming-of-age poem about a young man off to find fortune in the city, more than a