Tag: A. E. Housman

The rainy Pleiads wester,

Orion plunges prone,

The stroke of midnight ceases,

And I lie down alone.

A. E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman)

When I was one-and-twenty

I heard a wise man say,

“Give crowns and pounds and guineas

But not your heart away.”

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 (Alfred Edward Housman)

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.

A. E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman)

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.

A. E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman)

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. Houseman’s test for great poetry.

A. E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman)

The difference between an icicle and a red-hot poker is really much slighter than the difference between truth and falsehood or sense and nonsense; yet it is much more immediately noticeable and much more universally noticed, because the body is more sensitive than the mind.

A. E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman)

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

A. E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman)

Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain.

A. E. Housman (Alfred Edward Housman)