"Is my girl happy, That I thought hard to leave, And has she tired of weeping As she lies down at eve?"
[1] "Is My Team Ploughing" is a poem by A. E. Housman, published as number XXVII in his 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad.
In writing the poem, Housman borrows from the simple style of traditional folk ballads, featuring a question-and-answer format in a conversation.
The text, along with other poems from A Shropshire Lad, has been famously set to music by several English composers, including George Butterworth (Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad), Ralph Vaughan Williams (On Wenlock Edge) and Ivor Gurney.
[2]: 640 Vaughan Williams omitted the third and fourth verses, to Housman's annoyance, writing years later that he felt “a composer has a perfect right artistically to set any portion of a poem he chooses provided he does not actually alter the sense” of it.