Born on March 26, 1859, in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England, Alfred Edward Housman was the oldest of seven children. The poet was raised and received his early schooling in the adjacent town of Bromsgrove when his family relocated there a year after his birth. He studied at St. John’s College in Oxford in 1877, where he graduated with honors in classical moderations.
But when Housman fell in love with Moses Jackson, his roommate, he became sidetracked. Despite surprisingly failing his final exams, he passed the last year and went on to work for ten years as a clerk in the London Patent Office.
A. E. Housman Quotes
“The land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.”
— A. E. Housman
“All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.”
— A. E. Housman
“The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.”
— A. E. Housman
“Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.”
— A. E. Housman
“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.”
— A. E. Housman
“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.”
— A. E. Housman
“I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.”
— A. E. Housman
“Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.”
— A. E. Housman
“But if you ever come to a road where danger; Or guilt or anguish or shame’s to share. Be good to the lad who loves you true, And the soul that was born to die for you; And whistle and I’ll be there.”
— A. E. Housman
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.”
— A. E. Housman
“I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.”
— A. E. Housman
“A moment’s thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.”
— A. E. Housman
“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.”
— A. E. Housman
“If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude.”
— A. E. Housman
“Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.”
— A. E. Housman
“Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.”
— A. E. Housman
“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.”
— A. E. Housman
“To be a textual critic requires aptitude for thinking and willingness to think; and though it also requires other things, those things are supplements and cannot be substitutes. Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head.”
— A. E. Housman
“The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.”
— A. E. Housman
“Into my heart 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.”
— A. E. Housman
“When the journey’s over/There’ll be time enough to sleep.”
— A. E. Housman
“Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.”
— A. E. Housman
“With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.”
— A. E. Housman
“Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.”
— A. E. Housman
“And malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.”
— A. E. Housman
“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.”
— A. E. Housman
“Good religious poetry… is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.”
— A. E. Housman
“They say my verse is sad: no wonder; Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow, Not mine. but man’s.”
— A. E. Housman
“Existence is not itself a good thing, that we should spend a lifetime securing its necessaries: a life spent, however victoriously, in securing the necessaries of life is no more than an elaborate furnishing and decoration of apartments for the reception of a guest who is never to come. Our business here is not to live, but to live happily.”
— A. E. Housman
“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.”
— A. E. Housman
“Ten thousand times I’ve done my best and all’s to do again.”
— A. E. Housman
“I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.”
— 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.”
— A. E. Housman
“Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.”
— A. E. Housman
“Housman is one of my heroes and always has been. He was a detestable and miserable man. Arrogant, unspeakably lonely, cruel, and so on, but an absolutely marvellous minor poet, I think, and a great scholar.”
— A. E. Housman
“White in the moon the long road lies.”
— A. E. Housman
“Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways.”
— A. E. Housman
“Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.”
— A. E. Housman
“Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault; It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.”
— A. E. Housman
“To justify God’s ways to man.”
— A. E. Housman
“I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.”
— A. E. Housman
“I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.”
— A. E. Housman
“The thoughts of others Were light and fleeting, Of lovers’ meeting Or luck or fame. Mine were of trouble, And mine were steady; So I was ready When trouble came.”
— A. E. Housman
“All knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.”
— A. E. Housman
“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.”
— A. E. Housman
“White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above; White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love. Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: My feet upon the moonlit dust Pursue the ceaseless way. The world is round, so travellers tell, And straight through reach the track, Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well, The way will guide one back. But ere the circle homeward hies Far, far must it remove: White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love.”
— A. E. Housman
