But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts. And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts.
A. E. HOUSMANGive crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.
More A. E. Housman Quotes
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Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man’s deceiver Was never mine.
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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 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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Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
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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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Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.
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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 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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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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I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.
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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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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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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.
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When the journey’s over/There’ll be time enough to sleep.
A. E. HOUSMAN