Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.
A. E. HOUSMANRelated Topics

Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.
A. E. HOUSMANThis is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they’re in trouble And I am not.
A. E. HOUSMANHere 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.
A. E. HOUSMANNow hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack And leave your friends and go.
A. E. HOUSMANLovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
A. E. HOUSMANGood religious poetry… is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.
A. E. HOUSMANOn 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.
A. E. HOUSMANEven when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
A. E. HOUSMANHope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man’s deceiver Was never mine.
A. E. HOUSMANThere, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.
A. E. HOUSMANI could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
A. E. HOUSMANStone, steel, dominions pass, Faith too, no wonder; So leave alone the grass That I am under.
A. E. HOUSMANThere, like the wind through woods in riot, Through him the gale of life blew high; The tree of man was never quiet: Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.
A. E. HOUSMANThey say my verse is sad: no wonder; Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow, Not mine. but man’s.
A. E. HOUSMANI find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
A. E. HOUSMANClay 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.
A. E. HOUSMAN