6/8/2023 0 Comments A shropshire lad by ae housmanThe surprise at finding an adjective used as an adverb in this way is close to Hopkins’s linguistic innovations in his poetry, which are often used to convey surprise in the face of something approaching the Sublime, an almost childlike awe. Although it ends with ‘-ly’, ‘lovely’ is not an adverb, but an adjective, and so cannot modify an adjective like ‘bright’ in this way (as a point of comparison, substitute another adjective in place of ‘lovely’: we can write ‘wonderfully bright’, but not ‘warm bright’). Take that first line, ‘How clear, how lovely bright’. Housman is nevertheless a poet who subtly subverts our expectations regarding language, and how words are meant to behave. Indeed, although he is known for his clear and direct – even simple – way of writing about universal human emotions, A.
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