Thematic resemblances, and the lyrical nature of these settings of poems by A. E. Housman, make them a satisfying cycle, though it is not clear whether this was what the composer intended. All are well-distanced from the sentimental ballads popular in Victorian times, and comparisons with Butterworth's better-known settings of Houseman's "Shropshire Lad" poems are inevitable.

Here, however, the lonely hill country of the Shropshire/Welsh borderland is more strongly evoked, especially in "Bredon Hill" and the expansive "Oh fair enough are sky and plain." The melancholy cynicism of the last verse of "On the idle hill of summer"—"For the calling bugles hole / High the screaming life replies, / Gay the files of scarlet follow; / Women bore me, I will rise" again emphasizes the waste of war.

In two of the shortest songs, "When the lad for longing sighs" and "With rue my heart is laden," the composer seems to be playing with folk themes, but the music remains highly individual, and the intensity of feeling remains strong and deep.

These settings are on a par with some of Schubert's songs, and one could legitimately speak of them as "English Lieder." Butterworth's death on the Somme at the age of thirty-one in 1916 deprived England of one of its most promising young composers, which makes them doubly precious.

© Roy Brewer, Rovi