Top 15 Alfred Edward Housman Quotes

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

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

Good-night; ensured release, Imperishable peace, Have these for yours, While sea abides, and land, And earth's foundations stand, And heaven endures.

We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.

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.

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.

The rainy Pleiads wester, Orion plunges prone, The stroke of midnight ceases, And I lie down alone.

Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine.

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.

Poetry indeed seems to me more physical than intellectual. [...] 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. [...] The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach.

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

Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, 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.

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.

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.

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.