Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.
A. E. HOUSMANDo 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.
More A. E. Housman Quotes
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In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
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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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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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Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack And leave your friends and go.
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I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
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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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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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Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill.
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When the journey’s over, There’ll be time enough to sleep.
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Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.
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The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
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They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up.
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Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.
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Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.
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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.
A. E. HOUSMAN







