A.E. Housman: Man

“Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 62, st. 3.
Source: A Shropshire Lad (1896)

World , Chance , Sun , Training

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

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 23, st. 4.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“Could man be drunk for ever
With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at mornings
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

No. 10, st. 2.
Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

Love , Men , Lie , Thinking

“Hope lies to mortals
And most believe her,
But man's deceiver
Was never mine.”

A.E. Housman

No. 6, st. 1.
More Poems http://www.kalliope.org/vaerktoc.pl?vid=housman/1936 (1936)

Hope

“I rather doubt if man really has much to gain by substituting peace for strife, as you and Jesus Christ recommend. Sic notus Ulixes? do you think you can outwit the resourceful malevolence of Nature? God is not mocked, as St. Paul long ago warned the Galatians. When man gets rid of a great trouble he is easier for a while, but not for long: Nature instantly sets to work to weaken his power of sustaining trouble, and very soon seven pounds is as heavy as fourteen pounds used to be. Last Easter Monday a young woman threw herself in the Lea because her dress looked so shabby amongst the holiday crowd: in other times and countries women have been ravished by half-a-dozen dragoons and taken it less to heart. It looks to me as if the state of mankind always had been and always would be a state of just tolerable discomfort.”

A.E. Housman

"Letter to Gilbert Murray" (April 23, 1900).

Women , God , Peace , Nature

“His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 14, st. 3.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Soul , Heart

“A man who possesses common sense and the use of reason must not expect to learn from treatises or lectures on textual criticism anything that he could not, with leisure and industry, find out for himself. What the lectures and treatises can do for him is to save him time and trouble by presenting to him immediately considerations which would in any case occur to him sooner or later.”

A.E. Housman

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

Sense , Learning , Time

“The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Now I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me.”

A.E. Housman

No. 12, l. 1-4.
Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

God , Law

“Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not to left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 60.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Fear , Light , Night

“When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away."”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 13, st. 1.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Heart

“They say my verse is sad: no wonder.
Its narrow measure spans
Rue for eternity, and sorrow
Not mine, but man's.

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

A.E. Housman

Foreword.
More Poems http://www.kalliope.org/vaerktoc.pl?vid=housman/1936 (1936)

Sadness , Reading

“Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And 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.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 62, st. 2.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

God , Way , Drink , Thinking

“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.”

A.E. Housman

No. 12, l. 15-18.
Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

God , World

“The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic. His opinions are determined not by his reason -- 'the bulk of mankind' says Swift 'is as well qualified for flying as for thinking' -- but by his passions; and the faintest of all human passions is the love of truth. He believes that the text of ancient authors is generally sound, not because he has acquainted himself with the elements of the problem, but because he would feel uncomfortable if he did not believe it; just as he believes, on the same cogent evidence, that he is a fine fellow, and that he will rise again from the dead.”

A.E. Housman

Introduction to Astronomicon of Manilius, Lib I. (Cambridge University Press, [1903] 1937) p. xliii.

Love , Truth , Feeling , Problem

“There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 31, st. 4.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Life , Tree