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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.

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
Earth
Calling
Foundations
Made
Foundation
August
Beginning
Retreat
Took
Wages
Dead
Followed
Hours
Falling
Regulars
Heaven
British
Mercenary
Fall
Hour
Fled

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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.
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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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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.
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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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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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If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude.
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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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The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
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You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over You hearken to the lover's say, And happy is the lover. 'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never: I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.
A. E. Housman
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I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.
A. E. Housman
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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.
A. E. Housman
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I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist) and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.
A. E. Housman
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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
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The bells they sound on Bredon, And still the steeples hum. Come all to church, good people- Oh, noisy bells, be dumb I hear you, I will come.
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Tomorrow, more's the pity, Away we both must hie, To air the ditty and to earth I.
A. E. Housman
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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.
A. E. Housman
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Ten thousand times I've done my best and all's to do again.
A. E. Housman
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To justify God's ways to man.
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