“Stars, I have seen them fall,But when they drop and dieNo star is lost at allFrom all the star-sown sky.The toil of all that beHelps not the primal fault;It rains into the seaAnd still the sea is salt.”
— A.E. Housman
“Who made the world I cannot tell;’Tis made, and here I am in hell.”
— A.E. Housman
“Westward on the high-hilled plainsWhere for me the world began, Still, I think, in newer veinsFrets the changeless blood of man….There, when hueless is the westAnd the darkness hushes wide,Where the lad lies down to restStands the troubled dream beside.There, on thoughts that once were mine,Day looks down the eastern steep,And the youth at morning shineMakes the vow he will not keep.”
— A.E. Housman
“June suns, you cannot store themTo warm the winter’s cold,The lad that hopes for heavenShall fill his mouth with mould.”
— A.E. Housman
“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
“Terence, this is stupid stuff:You eat your victuals fast enough;There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,To see the rate you drink your beer.”
— A.E. Housman
“All knots that lovers tieAre tied to sever.Here shall your sweetheart lie,Untrue for ever.”
— A.E. Housman
“They say my verse is sad: no wonder.Its narrow measure spansRue for eternity, and sorrowNot mine, but man’sThis is for all ill-treated fellowsUnborn and unbegot,For them to read when they’re in troubleAnd I am not.”
— A.E. Housman
“How clear, how lovely bright,How beautiful to sight Those beams of morning play;How heaven laughs out with gleeWhere, like a bird set free,Up from the eastern sea Soars the delightful day.To-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 vow I never kept before.Ensanguining the skiesHow heavily it dies Into the west away;Past touch and sight and soundNot further to be found,How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day.”
— A.E. Housman
“The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do:My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two.But oh, my two troubles they reave me of rest,The brains in my head and the heart in my breast.Oh, grant me the ease that is granted so free,The birthright of multitudes, give it to me,That relish their victuals and rest on their bedWith flint in the bosom and guts in the head.”
— A.E. Housman
“Others, I am not the first,Have willed more mischief than they durst:If in the breathless night I tooShiver now, ’tis nothing new.More than I, if truth were told,Have stood and sweated hot and cold,And through their veins in ice and fireFear contended with desire.Agued once like me were they,But I like them shall win my wayLastly to the bed of mouldWhere there’s neither heat nor cold.But from my grave across my browPlays no wind of healing now,And fire and ice within me fightBeneath the suffocating night.”
— A.E. Housman
“Tis the old wind in the old anger,But then it threshed another wood.”
— A.E. Housman
“Into 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”
— A.E. Housman
“There pass the careless peopleThat call their souls their own:Here by the road I loiter,How idle and alone.Ah, past the plunge of plummet,In seas I cannot sound,My heart and soul and senses,World without end, are drowned.His folly has not fellowBeneath the blue of dayThat gives to man or womanHis heart and soul away.There flowers no balm to sain himFrom east of earth to westThat’s lost for everlastingThe heart out of his breast.Here by the labouring highwayWith empty hands I stroll:Sea-deep, till doomsday morning,Lie lost my heart and soul.”
— A.E. Housman
“The half-moon westers low, my love,And the wind brings up the rain;And wide apart lie we, my love,And seas between the twain.I know not if it rains, my love, In the land where you do lie;And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,You know no more than I.”
— A.E. Housman
“The 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
“Wanderers 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
“In 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
“And 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
“Oh 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
“Be 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
“Great 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
“To-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
“To 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
“The 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
“Lie 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
“Epitaph 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
“The 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
“Stone, steel, dominions pass,Faith too, no wonder;So leave alone the grassThat I am under.”
— A.E. Housman
“It 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