''The Land of Lost Content'' is a

song cycle A song cycle (german: Liederkreis or Liederzyklus) is a group, or cycle (music), cycle, of individually complete Art song, songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online'' The songs are either for solo voice ...

for voice and piano composed in 192021 by

John Ireland John Benjamin Ireland (January 30, 1914 – March 21, 1992) was a Canadian actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in ''All the King's Men'' (1949), making him the first Vancouver-born actor to receive an Oscar nomina ...

(18791962). It consists of settings of six poems by

A. E. Housman Alfred Edward Housman (; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English classical scholar and poet. After an initially poor performance while at university, he took employment as a clerk in London and established his academic reputation by pub ...

from his 1896 collection ''

A Shropshire Lad ''A Shropshire Lad'' is a collection of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman, published in 1896. Selling slowly at first, it then rapidly grew in popularity, particularly among young readers. Composers began setting the ...

''. A typical performance takes about 11 minutes. The songs are, with Roman numerals from ''A Shropshire Lad'', and first lines where Housman did not title his poem: # XXIX "The Lent Lily" # XV "Ladslove" ("Look not in my eyes") # XVII "Goal and Wicket" ("Twice a week the winter thorough") # XXXIII "The Vain Desire" ("If truth in hearts that perish") # XXII "The Encounter" ("The street sounds to the soldiers' tread") # LVII "Epilogue" ("You smile upon your friend today") The title of the cycle is taken from Housman's poem "Into my heart an air that kills", XL in ''A Shropshire Lad'':

References

Song cycles by John Ireland Classical song cycles in English 1921 compositions Musical settings of poems by A. E. Housman {{classical-composition-stub