This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they’re in trouble And I am not.
A. E. HOUSMANThe troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
More A. E. Housman Quotes
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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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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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Ten thousand times I’ve done my best and all’s to do again.
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On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;The wind it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.
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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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And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
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When the journey’s over, There’ll be time enough to sleep.
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Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.
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Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.
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That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
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Give me a land of boughs in leaf A land of trees that stand; Where trees are fallen there is grief; I love no leafless land.
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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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Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover; Breath’s aware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey’s over then 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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The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
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But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts. And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts.
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Good religious poetry… is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.
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And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
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A moment’s thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.
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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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And how am I to face the odds Of man’s bedevilment and God’s? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.
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The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
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Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
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Who made the world I cannot tell; ‘Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.
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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