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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.

A. E. Housman

The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
A. E. HOUSMAN
Good religious poetry… is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.
A. E. HOUSMAN
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
A. E. HOUSMAN
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

Emotion Poetry Reader Transmit
White in the moon the long road lies.
A. E. HOUSMAN
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Content Lost Myself Plain Shine
Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Earth Heaven High Strong
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.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Act Experience Memory Morning Poetry Skin Teaching
Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Action Field Long Play Tune
On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;The wind it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
A. E. HOUSMAN
The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Alone Hatton Lying Midnight Orion Prone Rain Strike Wester
Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Goodness Sick World
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.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Arrogant Greatness Hero Himself Lonely Man Misery Poet
Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Boundation Feel Lover Lying Night Power Satisfy Self Esteem Sleep Try
Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Ability Himself Nature Thinking Writing
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.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Cup Drink Eat Meat

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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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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