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.
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. HOUSMANHis folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.
A. E. HOUSMANShoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
A. E. HOUSMANThey 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.
A. E. HOUSMANTomorrow, more’s the pity, Away we both must hie, To air the ditty and to earth I.
A. E. HOUSMANThey carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
A. E. HOUSMANI, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.
A. E. HOUSMANHe 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.
A. E. HOUSMANI do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.
A. E. HOUSMANAnd malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.
A. E. HOUSMANLoveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.
A. E. HOUSMANI think that to transfuse emotion – not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader’s sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer – is the peculiar function of poetry.
A. E. HOUSMANGive 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.
A. E. HOUSMANAle, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
A. E. HOUSMANTen thousand times I’ve done my best and all’s to do again.
A. E. HOUSMANThe mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
A. E. HOUSMAN