A Shropshire Lad

Housman is a high-water mark of British lyric poetry, and this fine production captures perfectly his strong, melodic beat and decisive rhyme, and his wonderful way with words. Samuel West's cultivated Midlands accent may not be specifically Shropshire, but his voice and reading are true to Housman--who was not, after all, some rough Shropshire lad himself but an Oxford don. His "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now" and "To an Athlete Dying Young" are beautifully rendered here. West, you feel, reads poetry as it should be read--confidently, with ease and conviction, as if all the world spoke in meter and rhyme. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine