A.E. Housman

The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.

The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.

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.

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

Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.

And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night.

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.

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

Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, 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.

Good night; ensured release, Imperishable peace, Have these for yours. * While sky and sea and land And earth's foundations stand And heaven endures. *These three lines are on the tablet over Housman's grave in the parish church at Ludlow, Shropshire, England