- Alfred Edward Housman"s A Shropshire Lad is the wonderful collection of poems that are so evocative of "the blue remembered hills" of his youth. In this half-imaginary "land of lost content" the recurring theme is one of the helplessness of man against an achingly beautiful countryside. It has inspired generations of readers, and has found its way into the canon of English folksong with settings by Butterworth, Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams.