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The Collected Poems QUOTES

The Collected Poems QUOTES

1 " Oh on my breast in days hereafter
Light the earth should lie,
Such weight to bear is now the air,
So heavy hangs the sky.

(Additional Poems, X) "

― A.E. Housman , The Collected Poems

2 " Iniquity it is; but pass the can.
My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;
Our only portion is the estate of man:
We want the moon, but we shall get no more.

(Last Poems, IX) "

― A.E. Housman , The Collected Poems

3 " Could man be drunk for ever
      With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at morning
      And lief lie down of nights.

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

― A.E. Housman , The Collected Poems

4 " Here are the skies, the planets seven,
And all the starry train:
Content you with the mimic heaven,
And on the earth remain.

(Additional Poems, V) "

― A.E. Housman , The Collected Poems

5 " Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word. "

― A.E. Housman , The Collected Poems

6 " The Laws Of God, The Laws Of Man

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;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, Say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hellfire.
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.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can
These foreign laws of God and man. "

― A.E. Housman , The Collected Poems

7 " When Green Buds Hang in the Elm Like Dust

When green buds hang in the elm like dust
And sprinkle the lime like rain,
Forth I wander, forth I must,
And drink of life again.

Forth I must by hedgerow bowers
To look at the leaves uncurled,
And stand in the fields where cuckoo-flowers
Are lying about the world. "

― A.E. Housman , The Collected Poems

8 " A stranger and afraid in a world I never made. "

― A.E. Housman , The Collected Poems

9 " LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide. "

― A.E. Housman , The Collected Poems