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A.E. Housman Quotes | Quotes said by A.E. Housman

  • A.E. Housman Quote #1

    ...And friends abroad must bear in mind
    Friends at home they leave behind.
    Oh, I shall be stiff and cold
    When I forget you, hearts of gold;
    The land where I shall mind you not
    Is the land where all's forgot.
    And if my foot returns no more
    To Teme nor Corve nor Severn shore,
    Luck, my lads, be with you still
    By falling stream and standing hill,
    By chiming tower and whispering tree,
    Men that made a man of me.
    About your work in town and farm
    Still you'll keep my head from harm,
    Still you'll help me, hands that gave
    A grasp to friend me to the grave.


  • A.E. Housman Quote #2

    The Laws Of God, The Laws Of Man

    The laws of God, the laws of man
    He may keep that will and can;
    Not I: Let God and man decree
    Laws for themselves and not for me;
    And if my ways are not as theirs
    Let them mind their own affairs.
    Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
    Yet when did I make laws for them?
    Please yourselves, Say I, and they
    Need only look the other way.
    But no, they will not; they must still
    Wrest their neighbor to their will,
    And make me dance as they desire
    With jail and gallows and hellfire.
    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.
    They will be master, right or wrong;
    Though both are foolish, both are strong.
    And since, my soul, we cannot fly
    To Saturn nor to Mercury,
    Keep we must, if keep we can
    These foreign laws of God and man.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #3

    When Green Buds Hang in the Elm Like Dust

    When green buds hang in the elm like dust
    And sprinkle the lime like rain,
    Forth I wander, forth I must,
    And drink of life again.

    Forth I must by hedgerow bowers
    To look at the leaves uncurled,
    And stand in the fields where cuckoo-flowers
    Are lying about the world.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #4

    When I Was One-And-Twenty

    When I was one-and-twenty
    I heard a wise man say,
    `Give crowns and pounds and guineas
    But not your heart away;
    Give pearls away and rubies
    But keep your fancy free.'
    But I was one-and-twenty
    No use to talk to me.

    When I was one-and-twenty
    I heard him say again,
    `The heart out of the bosom
    Was never given in vain;
    'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
    And sold for endless rue.'
    And I am two-and-twenty
    And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #5

    With Rue My Heart Is Laden

    With rue my heart is laden
    For golden friends I had,
    For many a rose-lipt maiden
    And many a lightfoot lad.

    By brooks too broad for leaping
    The lightfoot boys are laid;
    The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
    In fields where roses fade.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #6

    Ale, man, Ale's the stuff to drink,
    for fellows whom it hurts to think.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #7

    All knots that lovers tie
    Are tied to sever.
    Here shall your sweetheart lie,
    Untrue for ever.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #8

    Along the field as we came by
    A year ago, my love and I,
    The aspen over stile and stone
    Was 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 tree
    There walks another love with me,
    And overhead the aspen heaves
    Its rainy-sounding silver leaves;
    And I spell nothing in their stir,
    But now perhaps they speak to her,
    And plain for her to understand
    They talk about a time at hand
    When I shall sleep with clover clad,
    And she beside another lad.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #9

    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 quarry
    I 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 #10

    Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

    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.

    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 #11

    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 Quote #12

    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 Quote #13

    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 Quote #14

    How clear, how lovely bright,
    How beautiful to sight
    Those beams of morning play;
    How heaven laughs out with glee
    Where, 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 skies
    How heavily it dies
    Into the west away;
    Past touch and sight and sound
    Not further to be found,
    How hopeless under ground
    Falls the remorseful day.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #15

    I to my perils
    Of cheat and charmer
    Came clad in armour
    By stars benign.
    Hope lies to mortals
    And most believe her,
    But man's deceiver
    Was never mine.

    The thoughts of others
    Were light and fleeting,
    Of lovers' meeting
    Or luck or fame.
    Mine were of trouble,
    And mine were steady;
    So I was ready
    When trouble came.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #16

    If 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 #17

    In my own shire, if I was sad
    Homely 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 brown
    I heard the beechnut rustle down,
    And saw the purple crocus pale
    Flower about the autumn dale;
    Or littering far the fields of May
    Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,
    And like a skylit water stood
    The bluebells in the azured wood.

    Yonder, lightening other loads,
    The season range the country roads,
    But here in London streets I ken
    No such helpmates, only men;
    And these are not in plight to bear,
    If they would, another's care.
    They have enough as 'tis: I see
    In many an eye that measures me
    The mortal sickness of a mind
    Too unhappy to be kind.
    Undone with misery, all they can
    Is to hate their fellow man;
    And till they drop they needs must still
    Look at you and wish you ill.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #18

    It nods and curtseys and recovers
    When the wind blows above,
    The nettle on the graves of lovers
    That hanged themselves for love.

    The nettle nods, the wind blows over,
    The man, he does not move,
    The lover of the grave, the lover
    That hanged himself for love.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #19

    IV
    REVEILLE

    Wake: the silver dusk returning
    Up the beach of darkness brims,
    And the ship of sunrise burning
    Strands upon the eastern rims.

    Wake: the vaulted shadow shaatters,
    Trampled to the floor it spanned,
    And the tent of night in tatters
    Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

    Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:
    Hear the drums of morning play;
    Hark, the empty highways crying
    Who'll beyond the hills away?

    Towns and countries woo together,
    Forelands beacon, belfries call;
    Never lad that trod on leather
    Lived to feast his heart with all.

    Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
    Sunlit pallets never thrive;
    Morns abed and daylight slumber
    Were not meant for man alive.

    Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
    Breath's a ware that will not keep
    Up, lad: when the journey's over
    There'll be time enough to sleep.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #20

    June suns, you cannot store them
    To warm the winter's cold,
    The lad that hopes for heaven
    Shall fill his mouth with mould.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #21

    Lie you easy, dream you light,
    And sleep you fast for aye;
    And luckier may you find the night
    Than ever you found the day.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #22

    Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,
    But young men think it is, and we were young.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #23

    Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #24

    Now hollow fires burn out to black,
    And lights are fluttering low:
    Square your shoulders, lift your pack
    And leave your friends and go.
    O never fear, lads, naught’s to dread,
    Look not left nor right:
    In all the endless road you tread
    There’s nothing but the night.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #25

    Oh fair enough are sky and plain,
    But I know fairer far:
    Those are as beautiful again
    That in the water are;

    The pools and rivers wash so clean
    The trees and clouds and air,
    The like on earth was never seen,
    And oh that I were there.

    These are the thoughts I often think
    As I stand gazing down
    In act upon the cressy brink
    To strip and dive and drown;

    But in the golden-sanded brooks
    And azure meres I spy
    A silly lad that longs and looks
    And wishes he were I.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #26

    Others, I am not the first,
    Have willed more mischief than they durst:
    If in the breathless night I too
    Shiver 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 fire
    Fear contended with desire.

    Agued once like me were they,
    But I like them shall win my way
    Lastly to the bed of mould
    Where there's neither heat nor cold.

    But from my grave across my brow
    Plays no wind of healing now,
    And fire and ice within me fight
    Beneath the suffocating night.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #27

    Stars, I have seen them fall,
    But when they drop and die
    No star is lost at all
    From all the star-sown sky.
    The toil of all that be
    Helps not the primal fault;
    It rains into the sea
    And still the sea is salt.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #28

    Stone, steel, dominions pass,
    Faith too, no wonder;
    So leave alone the grass
    That I am under.

  • A.E. Housman Quote #29

    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 Quote #30

    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 bed
    With flint in the bosom and guts in the head.

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