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A E Housman Short Poems

Famous Short A E Housman Poems. Short poetry by famous poet A E Housman. A collection of the all-time best A E Housman short poems


by A E Housman
 O why do you walk through the fields in boots,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody shoots,
Why do you walk through the fields in boots,
When the grass is soft as the breast of coots
And shivering-sweet to the touch?



by A E Housman
 Twice a week the winter thorough 
Here stood I to keep the goal: 
Football then was fighting sorrow 
For the young man's soul.
Now in Maytime to the wicket Out I march with bat and pad: See the son of grief at cricket Trying to be glad.
Try I will; no harm in trying: Wonder 'tis how little mirth Keeps the bones of man from lying On the bed of earth.

by A E Housman
 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.

by 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.

by A E Housman
 On your midnight pallet lying, 
Listen, and undo the door: 
Lads that waste the light in sighing 
In the dark should sigh no more; 
Night should ease a lover's sorrow; 
Therefore, since I go to-morrow, 
Pity me before.
In the land to which I travel, The far dwelling, let me say-- Once, if here the couch is gravel, In a kinder bed I lay, And the breast the darnel smothers Rested once upon another's When it was not clay.



by A E Housman
 Ho, everyone that thirsteth
And hath the price to give,
Come to the stolen waters,
Drink and your soul shall live.
Come to the stolen waters, And leap the guarded pale, And pull the flower in season Before desire shall fail.
It shall not last for ever, No more than earth and skies; But he that drinks in season Shall live before he dies.
June suns, you cannot store them To warm the winter's cold, The lad that hopes for heaven Shall fill his mouth with mold.

by A E Housman
 The star-filled seas are smooth tonight
 From France to England strown;
Black towers above Portland light
 The felon-quarried stone.
On yonder island; not to rise, Never to stir forth free, Far from his folk a dead lad lies That once was friends with me.
Lie you easy, dream you light, And sleep you fast for aye; And luckier may you find the night Than you ever found the day.

by A E Housman
 If by chance your eye offend you, 
Pluck it out, lad, and be sound: 
'Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you, 
And many a balsam grows on ground.
And if your hand or foot offend you, Cut it off, lad, and be whole; But play the man, stand up and end you, When your sickness is your soul.

by A E Housman
 He stood, and heard the steeple 
Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.
One, two, three, four, to market-place and people It tossed them down.
Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck.

by A E Housman
 Here dead we lie 
Because we did not choose 
To live and shame the land 
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, Is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, And we were young.

by A E Housman
 From far, from eve and morning 
And yon twelve-winded sky, 
The stuff of life to knit me 
Blew hither: here am I.
Now-- for a breath I tarry Nor yet disperse apart-- Take my hand quick and tell me, What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer; How shall I help you, say; Ere to the wind's twelve quarters I take my endless way.

by A E Housman
 The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild
It has devoured the little child.
The little child is unaware It has been eaten by the bear.

by A E Housman
 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.

by A E Housman
 Into my heart an air that kills 
From yon far country blows: 
What are those blue remembered hills, 
What spires, what farms are those? 

That is the land of lost content, 
I see it shining plain, 
The happy highways where I went 
And cannot come again.

Stars  Create an image from this poem
by 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.

by A E Housman
 Far in a western brookland 
That bred me long ago 
The poplars stand and tremble 
By pools I used to know.
There, in the windless night-time, The wanderer, marvelling why, Halts on the bridge to hearken How soft the poplars sigh.
He hears: no more remembered In fields where I was known, Here I lie down in London And turn to rest alone.
There, by the starlit fences, The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.

by A E Housman
 With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade.

by A E Housman
 Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough 
The land and not the sea, 
And leave the soldiers at their drill, 
And all about the idle hill 
Shepherd your sheep with me.
Oh stay with company and mirth And daylight and the air; Too full already is the grave Of fellows that were good and brave And died bacause they were.

by A E Housman
 Oh fair enough are 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 think As I stand gazing down In act upon the cressy brink To strip and dive and drown; But in the golden-sanded brooks And azure meres I spy A silly lad that longs and looks And wishes he were I.

by A E Housman
 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.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended; They stood, and earth's foundations stay; What God abandoned, these defended, And saved the sum of things for pay.

by A E Housman
 Say, lad, have you things to do? 
Quick then, while your day's at prime.
Quick, and if 'tis work for two, Here am I man: now's your time.
Send me now, and I shall go; Call me, I shall hear you call; Use me ere they lay me low Where a man's no use at all; Ere the wholesome flesh decay And the willing nerve be numb, And the lips lack breath to say, "No, my lad, I cannot come.
"

by A E Housman
 Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by, And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again.

by A E Housman
 I hoed and trenched and weeded, 
And took the flowers to fair: 
I brought them home unheeded; 
The hue was not the wear.
So up and down I sow them For lads like me to find, When I shall lie below them, A dead man out of mind.
Some seed the birds devour, And some the season mars, But here and there will flower, The solitary stars, And fields will yearly bear them As light-leaved spring comes on, And luckless lads will wear them When I am dead and gone.

by A E Housman
 It nods and curtseys and recovers 
When the wind blows above, 
The nettle on the graves of lovers 
That hanged themselves for love.
The nettle nods, the wind blows over, The man, he does not move, The lover of the grave, the lover That hanged himself for love.

by A E Housman
 You smile upon your friend to-day, 
To-day his ills are over; 
You hearken to the lover's say, 
And happy is the lover.
'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never; I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.