Quotes from A.E. Housman

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.

Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

You 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.

The half-moon westers low, my love, And the wind brings up the rain; And wide apart lie we, my love, And seas between the twain. I know not if it rains, my love, In the land where you do lie; And oh, so sound you sleep, my love, You know no more than I.

To stand up straight and tread the turning mill, To lie flat and know nothing and be still, Are the two trades of man; and which is worse I know not, but I know that both are ill.

The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild; He has devoured the infant child. The infant child is not aware It has been eaten by a bear." "Infant Innocence

Halt by the headstone naming The heart no longer stirred, And say the lad that loved you Was one that kept his word.

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

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries 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. Their shoulders held the sky suspended; They stood, and earth's foundations stay; What God abandoned, these defended, And saved the sum of things for pay.

Right you guessed the rising morrow And scorned to tread the mire you must: Dust's your wages, son of sorrow, But men may come to worse than dust. Souls undone, undoing others,- Long time since the tale began. You would not live to wrong your brothers: Oh lad, you died as fits a man.

If it chance your eye offends you, Pluck it out lad, and be sound: 'Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you, And many a balsam grows on ground. And if your hand or foot offend you, Cut it off, lad, and be whole; But play the man, stand up and end you, When your sickness is your soul.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists? 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 color of his hair.

I sought them far and found them, The sure, the straight, the brave, The hearts I lost my own to, The souls I could not save They braced their belts about them, They crossed in ships the sea, They sought and found six feet of ground, And there they died for me.

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, And went with half my life about my ways.

Loveliest of Trees Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.

I see In many an eye that measures me The mortal sickness of a mind Too unhappy to be kind. Undone with misery, all they can Is to hate their fellow man; - from Poem XLI

Shake hands, we shall never be friends; give over: I only vex you the more I try. All's wrong that ever I've done and said, And nought to help it in this dull head: Shake hands, goodnight, goodbye. But if you come to a road where danger Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share, Be good to the lad that loves you true And the soul that was born to die for you, And whistle and I'll be there.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose.

In the morning, in the morning, In the happy field of hay, Oh they looked at one another By the light of day. In the blue and silver morning On the haycock as they lay, Oh they looked at one another And they looked away.

The year might age, and cloudy The lessening day might close, But air of other summers Breathed from beyond the snows, And I had hope of those. They came and were and are not And come no more anew; And all the years and seasons That ever can ensue Must now be worse and few. So here's an end of roaming On eves when autumn nighs: The ear too fondly listens For summer's parting sighs, And then the heart replies.

They say my verse is sad: no wonder. Its narrow measure spans Rue for eternity, and sorrow Not mine, but man's This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they're in trouble And I am not.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were not meant for man alive.

Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head.

Westward on the high-hilled plains Where for me the world began, Still, I think, in newer veins Frets the changeless blood of man. ... There, when hueless is the west And the darkness hushes wide, Where the lad lies down to rest Stands the troubled dream beside. There, on thoughts that once were mine, Day looks down the eastern steep, And the youth at morning shine Makes the vow he will not keep.