A. E. Housman Quotes

And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

Great 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.

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.

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.

Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;The wind it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.

The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.

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.

I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.

With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.

I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.

Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.

The bells they sound on Bredon, And still the steeples hum. "Come all to church, good people"- Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; I hear you, I will come.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude.

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.

A moment's thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.

Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

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.

'Tis spring; come out to ramble The hilly brakes around, For under thorn and bramble About the hollow ground The primroses are found. And there's the windflower chilly With all the winds at play, And there's the Lenten lily That has not long to stay And dies on Easter day.

Into my hear an air that kills through yon far country blows what are those blue remembered hills what spires,what farms are those? that is the land of lost content I can see it shining plain the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.

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.

Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.

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.

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be, There's brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man. Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world's not.

The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.

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.

Who 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.

I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.

Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.

Ten thousand times I've done my best and all's to do again.

I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.

There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.

Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings All desired and timely things. All whom morning sends to roam, Hesper loves to lead them home. Home return who him behold, Child to mother, sheep to fold, Bird to nest from wandering wide: Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.

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.

White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above; White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love. Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: My feet upon the moonlit dust Pursue the ceaseless way. The world is round, so travellers tell, And straight through reach the track, Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well, The way will guide one back. But ere the circle homeward hies Far, far must it remove: White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love.

Good religious poetry... is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.

Clay 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.

To justify God's ways to man.

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

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.

They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.

Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking Spins the heavy world around.

These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. The British regulars who made the retreat from Mons, beginning August 24, 1914.

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.