01UndatedNow hollow fires burn out to black,And lights are fluttering low:Square your shoulders, lift your packAnd leave your friends and go.O never fear, lads, naught’s to dread,Look not left nor right: In all the endless road you treadThere’s nothing but the night.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
02UndatedLife, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,But young men think it is, and we were young.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
03UndatedYou 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 whileBefore I die for ever.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
04UndatedInto my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?That is the land of lost content,I see it shining plain,The happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come again.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
05UndatedTherefore, since the world has stillMuch good, but much less good than ill,And while the sun and moon endureLuck's a chance, but trouble's sure,I'd face it as a wise man would,And train for ill and not for good.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
06UndatedAlong the field as we came byA year ago, my love and I,The aspen over stile and stoneWas talking to itself alone.'Oh who are these that kiss and pass?A country lover and his lass;Two lovers looking to be wed;And time shall put them both to bed,But she shall lie with earth above,And he beside another love.'And sure enough beneath the treeThere walks another love with me, And overhead the aspen heavesIts rainy-sounding silver leaves;And I spell nothing in their stir,But now perhaps they speak to her,And plain for her to understandThey talk about a time at handWhen I shall sleep with clover clad,And she beside another lad.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
07UndatedWhen the lad for longing sighs,Mute and dull of cheer and pale,If at death's own door he lies,Maiden, you can heal his ail.Lovers' ills are all to buy:The wan look, the hollow tone,The hung head, the sunken eye,You can have them for your own.Buy them, buy them: eve and mornLovers' ills are all to sell.Then you can lie down forlorn;But the lover will be well.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
08UndatedWhen I examine my mind and try to discern clearly in the matter, I cannot satisfy myself that there are any such things as poetical ideas. No truth, it seems to me, is too precious, no observation too profound, and no sentiment too exalted to be expressed in prose. The utmost I could admit is that some ideas do, while others do not, lend themselves kindly to poetical expression; and that those receive from poetry an enhancement which glorifies and almost transfigures them, and which is not perceived to be a separate thing except by analysis.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
09UndatedIf it chance your eye offends you,Pluck it out lad, and be sound:'Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you,And many a balsam grows on ground.And if your hand or foot offend you,Cut it off, lad, and be whole;But play the man, stand up and end you,When your sickness is your soul.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
10UndatedIt nods and curtseys and recoversWhen the wind blows above,The nettle on the graves of loversThat hanged themselves for love.The nettle nods, the wind blows over,The man, he does not move,The lover of the grave, the loverThat hanged himself for love.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
11UndatedStone, steel, dominions pass,Faith too, no wonder;So leave alone the grassThat I am under.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
12UndatedThe sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read, we shall never come to the end of our story-book.", 3 October 1892)A.E. Housman / quote ↗
13UndatedEpitaph on an Army of Mercenaries These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled,Followed their mercenary callingAnd took their wages and are dead. Their shoulders held the sky suspended;They stood, and earth's foundations stay;What God abandoned, these defended,And saved the sum of things for pay.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
14UndatedLie you easy, dream you light,And sleep you fast for aye;And luckier may you find the nightThan ever you found the day.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
15UndatedThe sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read, we shall never come to the end of our story-A.E. Housman / quote ↗
16UndatedTo stand up straight and tread the turning mill,To lie flat and know nothing and be still,Are the two trades of man; and which is worseI know not, but I know that both are ill.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
17UndatedTo-day I shall be strong,No more shall yield to wrong,Shall squander life no more;Days lost, I know not how,I shall retrieve them now;Now I shall keep the vowI never kept before.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
18UndatedGreat 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 / quote ↗
19UndatedBe still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.Think rather,--call to thought, if now you grieve a little,The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarryI slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation--Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?A.E. Housman / quote ↗
20UndatedOh on my breast in days hereafterLight the earth should lie,Such weight to bear is now the air,So heavy hangs the sky.(Additional Poems, X)A.E. Housman / quote ↗
21UndatedAnd friends abroad must bear in mindFriends at home they leave behind.Oh, I shall be stiff and coldWhen I forget you, hearts of gold;The land where I shall mind you notIs the land where all's forgot.And if my foot returns no moreTo Teme nor Corve nor Severn shore,Luck, my lads, be with you stillBy falling stream and standing hill,By chiming tower and whispering tree,Men that made a man of me.About your work in town and farmStill you'll keep my head from harm,Still you'll help me, hands that gaveA grasp to friend me to the grave.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
22UndatedIn my own shire, if I was sadHomely comforters I had:The earth, because my heart was sore,Sorrowed for the son she bore;And standing hills, long to remain,Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.And bound for the same bourn as I,On every road I wandered by,Trod beside me, close and dear,The beautiful and death-struck year:Whether in the woodland brownI heard the beechnut rustle down,And saw the purple crocus paleFlower about the autumn dale;Or littering far the fields of MayLady-smocks a-bleaching lay,And like a skylit water stoodThe bluebells in the azured wood. Yonder, lightening other loads,The season range the country roads,But here in London streets I kenNo such helpmates, only men;And these are not in plight to bear,If they would, another's care.They have enough as 'tis: I seeIn many an eye that measures meThe mortal sickness of a mindToo unhappy to be kind.Undone with misery, all they canIs to hate their fellow man;And till they drop they needs must stillLook at you and wish you ill.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
23UndatedWanderers eastward, wanderers west, Know you why you cannot rest?'Tis that every mother's sonTravails 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 / quote ↗
24UndatedThe thoughts of othersWere light and fleeting,Of lovers' meetingOr luck or fame.Mine were of trouble,And mine were steady;So I was readyWhen trouble came.A.E. Housman / quote ↗
