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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
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A. E. Housman
Age: 77 †
Born: 1859
Born: January 1
Died: 1936
Died: January 1
Classical Philologist
Classical Scholar
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Worcs
A. E. Housman
Stand
Leafless
Land
Boughs
Give
Leafs
Giving
Leaf
Love
Fallen
Trees
Grief
Tree
More quotes by A. E. Housman
Existence is not itself a good thing, that we should spend a lifetime securing its necessaries: a life spent, however victoriously, in securing the necessaries of life is no more than an elaborate furnishing and decoration of apartments for the reception of a guest who is never to come. Our business here is not to live, but to live happily.
A. E. Housman
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.
A. E. Housman
We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.
A. E. Housman
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
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.
A. E. Housman
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.
A. E. Housman
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
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.
A. E. Housman
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
Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking Spins the heavy world around.
A. E. Housman
A moment's thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.
A. E. Housman
The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
A. E. Housman
The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.
A. E. Housman
'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.
A. E. Housman
Tomorrow, more's the pity, Away we both must hie, To air the ditty and to earth I.
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
Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.
A. E. Housman
The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
A. E. Housman
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.
A. E. Housman
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.
A. E. Housman
