E. Housman
E. Housman
life war lying
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.
art thinking poetry
Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I am convinced that most readers, when they think they are admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the poetry of the passage before them, but something else in it, which they like better than poetry.
love eye mirrors
Look not in my eyes, for fear They mirror true the sight I see, And there you find your face too clear And love it and be lost like me.
years twenties wearing-white
Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again.
thinking peculiar vibrations
I think that to transfuse emotion - not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer - is the peculiar function of poetry.
drinking food book
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
country blow air
Into my hear an air that kills through yon far country blows what are those blue remembered hills what spires,what farms are those? that is the land of lost content I can see it shining plain the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
evil world goodness
Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill
book reading way
Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.
way said poetry-is
Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.
men glory lad
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
asylums cambridge
I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.
easter spring wind
'Tis spring; come out to ramble The hilly brakes around, For under thorn and bramble About the hollow ground The primroses are found. And there's the windflower chilly With all the winds at play, And there's the Lenten lily That has not long to stay And dies on Easter day.
mother morning children
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.