The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
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.
More A. E. Housman Quotes
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White in the moon the long road lies.
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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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The fairies break their dances And leave the printed lawn.
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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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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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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.
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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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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 house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
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Oh I have been to Ludlow fair, and left my necktie God knows where. And carried half way home, or near, pints and quarts of Ludlow beer.
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Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.
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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.
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All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.
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With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.
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I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
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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.
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Who made the world I cannot tell; ‘Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.
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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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Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.
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The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me.
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Oh, ’tis jesting, dancing, drinking Spins the heavy world around.
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We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.
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Tomorrow, more’s the pity, Away we both must hie, To air the ditty and to earth I.
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I 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. HOUSMAN