Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.
A. E. HOUSMANNow hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack And leave your friends and go.
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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Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.
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But if you ever come to a road where danger; Or guilt or anguish or shame’s to share. Be good to the lad who loves you true, And the soul that was born to die for you; And whistle and I’ll be there.
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Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.
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They say my verse is sad: no wonder; Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow, Not mine. but man’s.
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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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They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
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Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.
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There, like the wind through woods in riot, Through him the gale of life blew high; The tree of man was never quiet: Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.
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And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
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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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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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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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The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.
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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.
A. E. HOUSMAN