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All knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.

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
Ever
Sweetheart
Knots
Untrue
Tied
Ties
Lovers
Shall
Lying
Sever

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The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
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Wanderers eastward, wanderers west, Know you why you cannot rest? 'Tis that every mother's son Travails with a skeleton. Lie down in the bed of dust Bear the fruit that bear you must Bring the eternal seed to light, And morn is all the same as night.
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In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
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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.
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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.
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Ten thousand times I've done my best and all's to do again.
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Could man be drunk for ever With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at morning 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.
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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.
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Mithridates, he died old. Housman's passage is based on the belief of the ancients that Mithridates the Great [c. 135-63 B.C.] had so saturated his body with poisons that none could injure him. When captured by the Romans he tried in vain to poison himself, then ordered a Gallic mercenary to kill him.
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Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck.
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Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack And leave your friends and go.
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The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
A. E. Housman
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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.
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The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
A. E. Housman
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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.
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A moment's thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.
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Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
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Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
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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.
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I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
A. E. Housman