Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by A. E. Housman

Image
'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
Image
The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
A. E. Housman
Image
Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
A. E. Housman
Image
There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.
A. E. Housman
Image
Here dead lie we 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.
A. E. Housman
Image
I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
A. E. Housman
Image
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
Image
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
A. E. Housman
Image
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.
A. E. Housman
Image
And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
A. E. Housman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
A. E. Housman
Image
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.
A. E. Housman
Image
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
Image
The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.
A. E. Housman
Image
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in troubleHis forest fleece the Wrekin heavesThe wind it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
A. E. Housman
Image
His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.
A. E. Housman
Image
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
Image
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover Breath's aware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over then there'll be time enough to sleep.
A. E. Housman