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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.

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
Almost
Pleasure
Extinguish
Understanding
Poetic
Perfect
Draw
May
Draws
Sometimes
Meaning
Even
Usually
Poetry

More quotes by A. E. Housman

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Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
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Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, I'd face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good.
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Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
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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.
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But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts. And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts
A. E. Housman
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That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
A. E. Housman
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The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
A. E. Housman
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The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
A. E. Housman
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Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill
A. E. Housman
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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
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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.
A. E. Housman
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Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.
A. E. Housman
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I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
A. E. Housman
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Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
A. E. Housman
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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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Into my hear an air that kills through yon far country blows what are those blue remembered hills what spires,what farms are those? that is the land of lost content I can see it shining plain the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
A. E. Housman
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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.
A. E. Housman
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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.
A. E. Housman
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I think that to transfuse emotion - not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer - is the peculiar function of poetry.
A. E. Housman
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His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.
A. E. Housman