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.
A. E. HOUSMANExperience 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.
More A. E. Housman Quotes
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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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Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
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This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they’re in trouble And I am not.
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Oh, ’tis jesting, dancing, drinking Spins the heavy world around.
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Stone, steel, dominions pass, Faith too, no wonder; So leave alone the grass That I am under.
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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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The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
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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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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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Good religious poetry… is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.
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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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The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
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I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
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I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.
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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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And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
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The thoughts of others Were light and fleeting, Of lovers’ meeting Or luck or fame. Mine were of trouble, And mine were steady; So I was ready When trouble came.
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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.
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Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
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I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
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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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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.
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Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man’s deceiver Was never mine.
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There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.
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I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.
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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.
A. E. HOUSMAN