An Analysis of Housman's "Is my team plowing"
             Thesis: In Housman's "Is My Team Plowing", the lyrical speaker discusses how life goes on after death. Housman uses quotation marks and play on words to convey the guilt that that the living feels for moving on after a loved one dies.
             (a) Housman uses the questions and answers of the speaker to show that life continues normally after a loss of a friend.
             (b) The use of the quotation marks embedded into the question-and-answer format show that there is only one speaker. Only the questions are in quotes. The friend of the deceased man is having a conversation with himself, resulting from the guilt of moving on and bedding with his friend's wife.
             (c) The rhyme scheme is on the ABCB format, like ballads. This gives a lyrical flow to the poem. Like the question/answer format of the stanzas, the lines alternate in a similar way.
             (d) The poem consists of four questions and four answers. The first question/answer relates to work. The second pair of stanzas relate to leisure (football). The third is about the dead man's wife, and the fourth is about his friend, the speaker.
             II. The poem's origin, purpose, and title.
             (a) The poem is written by A.E. Housman, whose work was mostly about death. Most of his poems are either about death or have to do with a dead person, like in this poem.
             (b) The purpose of this poem is to show that life goes on even after someone's death. The poem shows that the living also feel guilty to enjoy such pleasures of life while their friend misses life.
             (b) The poem is most likely untitled, and so the first line of the poem was used to name the poem.
             (a) Housman uses the play on words to show that the speaker is not only lying (sleeping) with his dead companion's wife, but also lying to him by using the word, "lie" with a doubl
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