In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
A. E. HOUSMANLife, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.
More A. E. Housman Quotes
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Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.
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June suns, you cannot store them To warm the winter’s cold, The lad that hopes for heaven Shall fill his mouth with mould.
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He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, And went with half my life about my ways.
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Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
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And malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.
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Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.
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They say my verse is sad: no wonder; Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow, Not mine. but man’s.
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We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.
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Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault; It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.
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And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
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Ten thousand times I’ve done my best and all’s to do again.
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I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
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Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.
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Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways.
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Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
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You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over; You hearken to the lover’s say, And happy is the lover. ‘Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never: I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.
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Oh I have been to Ludlow fair, and left my necktie God knows where. And carried half way home, or near, pints and quarts of Ludlow beer.
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All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.
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Look not in my eyes, for fear They mirror true the sight I see, And there you find your face too clear And love it and be lost like me.
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The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
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His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.
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When the journey’s over/There’ll be time enough to sleep.
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Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man’s deceiver Was never mine.
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There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.
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To justify God’s ways to man.
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Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.
A. E. HOUSMAN