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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.

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

Act Experience Memory Morning Poetry Skin Teaching
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
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.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Beer Belief Cause Home Lost Loyalty Name Popular Way
This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they’re in trouble And I am not.
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
I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Agree Discuss Fact Feeling One Liner Right Word Wrong
The fairies break their dances And leave the printed lawn.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Break Dance Leaving Print
The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
A. E. HOUSMAN
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.
A. E. HOUSMAN
And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Cheer Doubt Ear Emotion Fear Scare Silence Sound Stop Worse
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Bloom Flower Nature Tree
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Belief Believe Book Drink Food Greatness Hope Loyal Soul Today Worship Yesterday
We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Believe Darkness Earth Greatness Hope Loyal Peace Soul Today Worship Yesterday
The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Beer Dust Eternity Exploit Hurry Inspirational Literature Reality Reveal Sky True
Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Poetry Words Writing
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.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Die Hope Irony Lesson Life Lying Memory Shame War Wish

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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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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Popular Authors

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