With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.
A. E. HOUSMANRelated Topics
With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.
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
Tomorrow, more’s the pity, Away we both must hie, To air the ditty and to earth I.
A. E. HOUSMAN
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
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.
A. E. HOUSMAN
You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over; You hearken to the lover’s say, And happy is the lover. ‘Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never: I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.
A. E. HOUSMAN
And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
A. E. HOUSMAN
When the journey’s over/There’ll be time enough to sleep.
A. E. HOUSMAN
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
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
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.
A. E. HOUSMAN
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
Good religious poetry… is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.
A. E. HOUSMAN
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
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.
A. E. HOUSMAN
June suns, you cannot store them To warm the winter’s cold, The lad that hopes for heaven Shall fill his mouth with mould.
A. E. HOUSMAN