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

— A.E. Housman

Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are fluttering low:Square your shoulders, lift your Packard leave your friends and go. O never fear, lads, naught’s to dread, Look not left nor right: In all the endless road you tread There’s nothing but the night.

— A.E. Housman

Oh, fair enough is sky and plain, But I know fairer far:Those are as beautiful again That in the water are;The pools and rivers wash so clean The trees and clouds and air, The like on earth was never seen, And oh that I were there. These are the thoughts I often thinks I stand gazing downing act upon the cress brink To strip and dive and drown;But in the golden-sanded brooks And azure meres I spy silly lad that longs and looks And wishes he where I.

— A.E. Housman

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

Others, I am not the first, Have willed more mischief than they durst:If in the breathless night I too Shiver now, 'tis nothing new. More than I, if truth were told, Have stood and sweated hot and cold, And through their veins in ice and fire Fear contended with desire. Agued once like me were they, But I like them shall win my way Lastly to the bed of mouldWhere there's neither heat nor cold. But from my grave across my brow Plays no wind of healing now, And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night.

— A.E. Housman

Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and Diego 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

Stone, steel, dominions pass, Faith too, no wonder;So leave alone the grasschat I am under.

— A.E. Housman

Terence, this is stupid stuff:You eat your victuals fast enough;There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer.

— A.E. Housman

The half-moon wester slow, my love, And the wind brings up the rain;And wide apart lie we, my love, And seas between the twain. I know not if it rains, my love, In the land where you do lie;And oh, so sound you sleep, my love, You know no more than I.

— A.E. Housman

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