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. HOUSMANNature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
More A. E. Housman Quotes
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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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That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
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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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Stars, 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.
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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.
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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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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.
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And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
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But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts. And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts.
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The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
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Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.
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Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
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Stone, steel, dominions pass, Faith too, no wonder; So leave alone the grass That I am under.
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I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
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I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.
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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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Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.
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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.
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A moment’s thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.
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His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.
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Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck.
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Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill.
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With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.
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This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they’re in trouble And I am not.
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Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.
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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.
A. E. HOUSMAN