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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.

A. E. Housman

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

Fire Friend Hollow Light Shoulder
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

Heaven Himself Hope Store Warm
All knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Knot Lover Sever Tie Untrue
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.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Collection Count Curse Himself Strength
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.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Die Drop Fall Sky Stars
And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Ears Earth Silence Worst
They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Cup Drink Eat Meat
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
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
A. E. HOUSMAN
They say my verse is sad: no wonder; Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow, Not mine. but man’s.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Apostles Culture Equality Grace Men Mindset Pleasure Saint World
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
The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Alone Hatton Lying Midnight Orion Prone Rain Strike Wester
The thoughts of others Were light and fleeting, Of lovers’ meeting Or luck or fame. Mine were of trouble, And mine were steady; So I was ready When trouble came.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Fame Fleeting Lover Luck Thoughts Trouble
A moment’s thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.
A. E. HOUSMAN

Believe Humanity Long Luck Moment Pain Painful Struggle
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

Friendship Heart Maidan
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. HOUSMAN

Grief Land Love Myself Stand Tree

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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