A. E. Housman

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When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away."

Alfred Edward Housman (March 26, 1859 - April 30, 1936), usually known as A.E. Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad.

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2 Attributed
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The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic. His opinions are determined not by his reason -- 'the bulk of mankind' says Swift 'is as well qualified for flying as for thinking' -- but by his passions; and the faintest of all human passions is the love of truth. He believes that the text of ancient authors is generally sound, not because he has acquainted himself with the elements of the problem, but because he would feel uncomfortable if he did not believe it; just as he believes, on the same cogent evidence, that he is a fine fellow, and that he will rise again from the dead.
- Introduction to Astronomicon of Manlius, Lib I. Cambridge: CUP, 1937, pg xliii

Oh they're taking him to prison for the color of his hair.
- Additional Poems, No. 18, st. 1 (1937)

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A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.
- No. 2, st. 1

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
- No. 2, st. 2-3

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.
- No. 4 (Reveille), st. 6

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.
- No. 12, st. 4

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away."
- No. 13, st. 1

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.
- No. 13, st. 2

His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.
- No. 14, st. 3

Oh, when I was in love with you
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
- No. 18

And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.
- No. 19 (To an Athlete Dying Young), st. 4

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.
- No. 21, st. 7

They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,
The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
- No. 23, st. 4

But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.
- No. 30, st. 4

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.
- No. 31, st. 4

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
That will not shower on me.
- No. 39, st. 3

Into my heart an air that kills
From 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 went
And cannot come again.
- No. 40

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
- No. 48, st. 1

Far in a western brookland
That bred me long ago
The poplars stand and tremble
By pools I used to know.
- No. 52, st. 1

There, by the starlit fences,
The wanderer halts and hears
My soul that lingers sighing
About the glimmering weirs.
- No. 52, st. 4

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.
- No. 54

Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not to left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.
- No. 60

Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think.
- No. 62, st. 2

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Last Poems (1922)

The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May.
- No. 9, st. 1

The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
- No. 9, st. 7

But men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Their hands upon their hearts.
- No. 10, st. 2

The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Now I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me.
- No. 12, l. 1-4

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.
- No. 12, l. 15-18

He stood, and heard the steeple
Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.
One, two, three, four, to market-place and people
It tossed them down.

Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.
- No. 15 (Eight O'Clock)

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.
- No. 24 (Epithalamium), st. 3

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.
- No. 37 (Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries)

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.
- No. 40, st. 1

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More Poems (1936)

They say my verse is sad: no wonder.
Its narrow measure spans
Rue for eternity, and sorrow
Not mine, but man's.

This is for all ill-treated fellows
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not.
- Foreword

Hope lies to mortals
And most believe her,
But man's deceiver
Was never mine.
- No. 6, st. 1

The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases,
And I lie down alone.
- No. 11, st. 1

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.
- No. 36

We now to peace and darkness
And earth and thee restore
Thy creature that thou madest
And wilt cast forth no more.
- No. 47 (For My Funeral), st. 3

Good-night; ensured release,
Imperishable peace,
Have these for yours,
While sea abides, and land,
And earth's foundations stand,
And heaven endures.
- No. 48 (Alta Quies), st. 1

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The Name and Nature of Poetry (May 9, 1933)

The Leslie Stephen Lecture, Cambridge University

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out ... and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, 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.

Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act...The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach.

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Attributed

I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

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

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.

The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.

The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.

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.

The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out, but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

We for a certainty are not the first have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed whatever brute and blackguard made the world.