What is the gist of what "On Wenlock Edge the Wood's in Trouble" by A. E. Housman is about?On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble; His forest fleece...

This very interesting and stirring poem by A. E. Housman,
"On Wenlock Edge the Wood's in Trouble," is the poetic speaker's lament for his supposed
fate. It is constructed as a double metaphor that equates a personified wind and woods
bent double to (1) the trouble of life for an imagined Roman in England and to (2) the
trouble of life for himself; he ends with a prophesy of his upcoming fate. The key to
understanding the poem is understanding the vocabulary, so we'll start
there.

Wenlock Edge is an escarpment (steep hill face or
cliff) in Shropshire, England. In the phrase "the wood's in trouble," Housman
personifies the woods growing on the escarpment, which explains "his" of the next line:
"his" equals the woods. "Forest fleece" is the snow covering the woods, so the setting
of this lament is winter. "Wrekin" in "the Wrekin heaves" is the name of a village in
the Midlands sector of England. Wrekin is also personified because it "heaves." Severn
is a river running in East Wales and West England, a river thick with snow and
leaves.

A "holt" is a wood or grove, while a "hanger" is
wood on a steep hill, primarily a beech wood on a chalk hill in Southern England (we
seem to be going all over the map: Midlands, Wales, West England, South England). Uricon
was an ancient Roman city near Shrewsbury, England, which is in the Midlands area.
Finally "old anger" of the personified wind is best understood as the more common
personification of the fury of the wind.

The theme is
embodied in the lines, "The tree of man was never quiet: / Then 'twas the Roman, now
'tis I." The prophesy of his fate is laid out in the stanza following the theme that
equates the speaker with the Roman:

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The gale, it plies the saplings
double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and
his trouble
Are ashes under
Uricon.

So to put all this
together, the poetic speaker laments his troubles and his prophesied fate (a fate of
uniquely overwhelming trouble, not just a universal fate of death) by recalling the
immortal inviolable action of the relentless winter wind in and throughout England and
by recalling the history of the Romans in England through the imagery of one isolated
individual Roman. The speaker feels that the wind of his troubles will bow him double
like the saplings on the escarpment and that like the Roman, he will die a merciless
end. Therefore the "Wood's in Trouble" of the title refers to all parts of the metaphor,
including the speaker.