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A Shropshire Lad quotes
17 quotes from A Shropshire Lad by A. E Housman. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #5720 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide.
Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those?
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.
Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears:
When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free."
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.
Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
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.
But from my grave across my brow Plays no wind of healing now, And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose.
To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.
"Is my team ploughing, That I was used to drive And hear the harness jingle When I was man alive?"
With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfoot lad.
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves; The gale, it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world's not.
Come you home a hero, Or come not home at all, The lads you leave will mind you Till Ludlow tower shall fall.
From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again.