These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth’s foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. The British regulars who made the retreat from Mons, beginning August 24, 1914.
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.
Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.
The fairies break their dances And leave the printed lawn.
Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
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.
They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up.
Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.
I think that to transfuse emotion – not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader’s sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer – is the peculiar function of poetry.
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 and absolutely marvellous minor poet, I think, and a great scholar.
This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they’re in trouble And I am not.
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.
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.
Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ten thousand times I’ve done my best and all’s to do again.
Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.
I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
All knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.