If you look at any printing of this poem, for example, in A Shropshire Lad (1896), p. 13, you’ll see that each stanza starts with an open quotation mark, but only the last stanza ends with a close quotation mark. This use of punctuation means that all six stanzas belong to a single speech by one speaker. We can deduce that the speaker is the murderer, because in the second stanza he says, “Maurice amongst the hay lies still / And my knife is in his side”, and that the speaker is talking to Terence, because he addresses him by name in the first stanza.

There is no indication that Terence has done anything wrong, in fact quite the opposite, for the speaker wishes him “a love to keep you clean” (not “make you clean”), the implication being that Terence is currently “clean” of guilt or crime.

There is no indication of religious feeling in the poem. The speaker and expresses sadness at having to bid farewall to his home (the “barn and stack and tree” of the farm where he has worked), his mother and his friend, but says nothing about his soul or the afterlife.

Finally, there is no indication of the cause of the murder. We might guess that the quarrel was over a woman, because of the speaker’s wish that Terence should have a “love to keep you clean”. But this is a weak supposition, because if a woman were involved then we would expect the speaker to express some sorrow at having to abandon her. We might just as well imagine that the cause of the quarrel was a gambling debt, based on the speaker’s wish that Terence should have “luck at racing”.

We can conclude that Housman has deliberately remained silent about the cause of the murder, to leave it up to the reader’s imagination, making the story less specific and more mythic. Any story of a murder of one brother by the other reminds us of the story of Cain and Abel from book of Genesis, in which Cain was jealous of the preference shown by God to his brother’s sacrifical offerings. Cain was an arable farmer and Abel a shepherd—both of these professions are mentioned in the poem (the “scythe and rake” of the farmer and the “fold” of the shepherd). Cain was cursed to be “fugitive and a vagabond in the earth”, like the speaker in Housman’s poem, who will “come home no more”.

If you look at any printing of this poem, for example, in A Shropshire Lad (1896), p. 13, you’ll see that each stanza starts with an open quotation mark, but only the last stanza ends with a close quotation mark. This use of punctuation means that all six stanzas belong to a single speech by one speaker. We can deduce that the speaker is the murderer, because in the second stanza he says, “Maurice amongst the hay lies still / And my knife is in his side”, and that the speaker is talking to Terence, because he addresses him by name in the first stanza.

There is no indication that Terence has done anything wrong, in fact quite the opposite, for the speaker wishes him “a love to keep you clean” (not “make you clean”), the implication being that Terence is currently “clean” of guilt or crime.

There is no indication of religious feeling in the poem. The speaker expresses sadness at having to bid farewall to his home (the “barn and stack and tree” of the farm where he has worked), his mother and his friend, but says nothing about his soul or the afterlife.

Finally, there is no indication of the cause of the murder. We might guess that the quarrel was over a woman, because of the speaker’s wish that Terence should have a “love to keep you clean”. But this is a weak supposition, because if a woman were involved then we would expect the speaker to express some sorrow at having to abandon her (also, it would seem inapposite to wish that Terence had “a love you keep you clean” if a love had been the cause of the murder). We might just as well imagine that the cause of the quarrel was a gambling debt, based on the speaker’s wish that Terence should have “luck at racing”.

We can conclude that Housman has deliberately remained silent about the cause of the murder, to leave it up to the reader’s imagination, making the story less specific and more mythic. Any story of a murder of one brother by the other reminds us of the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis chapter 4, in which Cain was jealous of the preference shown by God for his brother’s sacrifical offerings. Cain was an arable farmer (“a tiller of the ground”) and Abel a shepherd; both of these professions are mentioned in the poem (the “scythe and rake” of the farmer and the “fold” of the shepherd). Cain was cursed to be “fugitive and a vagabond in the earth”, like the speaker in Housman’s poem, who will “come home no more”.