Alfred Edward Housman Quotes

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

And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.

Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack, And leave your friends and go. Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread, Look not to left nor right: In all the endless road you tread There's nothing but the night.

But from my grave across my brow Plays no wind of healing now, And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night.

To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high, we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.

My heart always warms to people who do not come to see me, especially Americans, to whom it seems to be more of an effort.

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

Could man be drunk for ever With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at mornings And lief lie down of nights. But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts.

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.

Oh, when I was in love with you Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well did I behave. And now the fancy passes by And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again.

His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.

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.

accuracy is a duty and not a virtue

Here dead we lie 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.

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge, Gold that I never see; Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge That will not shower on me.