“Housman is one of my heroes and always has been. He was a detestable and miserable man. Arrogant, unspeakably lonely, cruel, and so on, but and absolutely marvellous minor poet, I think, and a great scholar.”

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

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.

Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.

The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.

Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck.

When the journey’s over/There’ll be time enough to sleep.

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.

I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.

All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.

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.

June suns, you cannot store them To warm the winter’s cold, The lad that hopes for heaven Shall fill his mouth with mould.

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.

I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.

When the journey’s over, There’ll be time enough to sleep.

To justify God’s ways to man.

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.