E. Housman Quotations

Made of earth and sea / His overcoat for ever, / And wears the turning globe.

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

Oh, when I was in love with you, / Then I was clean and brave.

From far, from eve and morning And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here am I

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.

But men at whiles are sober / And think by fits and starts, / And if they think, they fasten / Their hands upon their hearts.

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

At that time I had no notion that I should ever come to live in Somerset - to live actually within the range of what then lay before me.

And the feather pate of folly / Bears the falling of the sky.

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

Then the world seemed none so bad, and I myself a sterling lad. And down in lovely muck I've lain, happy - till I woke up again.

They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man, / The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.

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 for sleep.

Before the war ended common sense had rescued me from any belief that war could do the human race, or my country, any good whatever.