With Rue My Heart Is Laden

By A. E. Housman

“With Rue My Heart Is Laden” is A. E. Housman’s eight-line elegy for the friends of his youth, first published in 1896 as poem LIV of A Shropshire Lad. The speaker remembers “golden friends,” rose-lipped girls and lightfoot boys, and then tells us that all of them now lie buried in the fields.

Our reading is that the poem’s power comes from what it leaves out. It never says “dead,” only “laid” and “sleeping,” and its gentleness makes the loss harder, not easier, to bear.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ

Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

The speaker says his heart is heavy with sorrow for the good friends he once had: many pretty girls and many quick, light-footed boys.

In the second stanza, we learn where they are now. The boys are buried beside streams too wide to jump, and the girls lie “sleeping” in fields where the roses are fading.

The Poem

The text below follows A Shropshire Lad (1896), where the poem appears untitled as number LIV.

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.

Background

“With Rue My Heart Is Laden” is poem LIV of A Shropshire Lad, the sequence of 63 poems that Housman published at his own expense in 1896. Housman was a classical scholar, later Professor of Latin at Cambridge, and the book grew slowly into one of the most loved volumes of English poetry. Like most poems in the sequence, it has no title and is known by its first line.

Early death runs through the whole book, in soldiers, suicides, and young countrymen buried in the churchyard. This poem gathers that theme into its shortest form. Readers have also heard echoes of older elegies in it, including the Greek Anthology, which Housman knew well, and the dirge in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, whose “Golden lads and girls” come to dust.

Analysis and Themes

The poem works as a before and after. The first stanza is memory, and the second is the grave.

Golden Friends

The first stanza is almost cheerful in its images. The friends are “golden,” the girls “rose-lipt,” and the boys “lightfoot.” Every word is about youth, color, and movement. Only the first line, “With rue my heart is laden,” warns us that these are memories seen through grief.

Death Without the Word

The second stanza takes the same people and lays them in the ground. Housman never names death. The boys are “laid,” and the girls are “sleeping,” soft words for burial. The restraint makes the loss feel more final, because the speaker cannot bring himself to say it plainly.

Nature That Outlasts the Young

The brooks the boys once leapt are now “too broad for leaping,” a playful boyhood challenge turned into the border between life and death. The girls lie “In fields where roses fade,” so the rose that described their lips now fades above them. The landscape stays, and the young people who ran through it are gone.

Form and Technique

The poem has two quatrains of iambic trimeter, as in “with RUE my HEART is LA-den.” The odd lines add a soft, unstressed final syllable (“laden,” “maiden,” “leaping,” “sleeping”), which gives them a falling, sighing close. The even lines end on a firm stressed syllable. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD.

Housman builds the poem on echo. “Rose-lipt” and “lightfoot” appear in both stanzas, first for the living and then for the dead, and the heavy alliteration of “brooks too broad” and “lightfoot … laid” gives the lines the sound of a folk song. The plain words and strict pattern hold the grief in check, which is exactly why it comes through.

Notable Lines

Two passages carry the poem.

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,

Lines 1 to 2

The opening sets the tone of the whole poem, and “golden” shows how precious these friends were.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;

Lines 5 to 6

The turn to death, where a boyhood game becomes a line the living cannot cross.

Themes

Three ideas run through the poem.

Early death. The friends died young, while they were still golden and quick.

Memory and grief. The speaker survives to carry the memory, and remembering is itself the sorrow.

The passing of youth. Beauty and quickness fade like the roses, and the poem mourns a whole lost season of life.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “With Rue My Heart Is Laden”.

What is “With Rue My Heart Is Laden” about?

It is about grief for friends who died young. The speaker remembers the “golden friends” of his youth, the girls and boys he knew, and then reveals that they are all buried now, beside brooks and in country fields.

What does “with rue my heart is laden” mean?

It means “my heart is heavy with regret and sorrow.” “Rue” is bitter sorrow, and “laden” means loaded or weighed down.

What does “rose-lipt” mean?

“Rose-lipt” is an old spelling of “rose-lipped,” meaning having red, rosy lips. Housman uses it for the young women the speaker remembers, as a sign of youth and beauty.

Why are the brooks “too broad for leaping”?

When the boys were alive, they were “lightfoot,” quick enough to jump the country streams. Now they are buried beside brooks they can no longer cross. The line quietly turns a boyhood game into an image of death as a border the living cannot leap.

What is the rhyme scheme of “With Rue My Heart Is Laden”?

The poem rhymes ABAB CDCD. The odd lines end in two-syllable rhymes (“laden” and “maiden,” “leaping” and “sleeping”), and the even lines end in one-syllable rhymes (“had” and “lad,” “laid” and “fade”).

Glossary

A few words may be unfamiliar.

• rue (line 1): Bitter sorrow or regret. It is also the name of a bitter herb linked with grief.
• laden (line 1): Loaded or weighed down.
• golden (line 2): Precious and bright with youth.
• rose-lipt (line 3): Rose-lipped, with red, youthful lips.
• lightfoot (line 4): Quick and nimble on their feet.
• laid (line 6): Laid to rest, or buried.

In Popular Culture

The poem is one of the most often set to music in the English language.

George Butterworth set it in Bredon Hill and Other Songs (1912), and Samuel Barber included it in his Three Songs, Op. 2. Ralph Vaughan Williams set it in his cycle Along the Field, and Ivor Gurney set it in The Western Playland. Dozens of other composers have set it as well.

Related Poems

If this poem speaks to you, these make good companions.

• To an Athlete Dying Young by A. E. Housman: From the same book, a young champion carried to his grave.
• Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now by A. E. Housman: A young man counts the springs he has left.
• When I Was One-and-Twenty by A. E. Housman: Another short lyric of youth and “endless rue.”
• Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost: Eight lines on how quickly golden things pass.