A. E. HOUSMAN

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.

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

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.

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.

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

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.

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.

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.

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

If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

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.

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

I sought them far and found them, The sure, the straight, the brave, The hearts I lost my own to, The souls I could not save They braced their belts about them, They crossed in ships the sea, They sought and found six feet of ground, And there they died for me.

Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.