Give me a land of boughs in leaf A land of trees that stand; Where trees are fallen there is grief; I love no leafless land.
A. E. HOUSMANGive me a land of boughs in leaf A land of trees that stand; Where trees are fallen there is grief; I love no leafless land.
A. E. HOUSMANShoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
A. E. HOUSMANClay 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.
A. E. HOUSMANYou 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. HOUSMANStars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault; It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.
A. E. HOUSMANThe mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
A. E. HOUSMANThe laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me.
A. E. HOUSMANI could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
A. E. HOUSMANGreat 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. HOUSMANWho 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. HOUSMANTell 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. HOUSMANI find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
A. E. HOUSMANNature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
A. E. HOUSMANIn every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
A. E. HOUSMANPoetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.
A. E. HOUSMANAll knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.
A. E. HOUSMAN