24 quotes
His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,
The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
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.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither; here am I.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
There, by the starlit fences,
The wanderer halts and hears
My soul that lingers sighing
About the glimmering weirs.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
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.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Far in a western brookland
That bred me long ago
The poplars stand and tremble
By pools I used to know.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
The bells they sound on Bredon
And still the steeples hum.
"Come all to church, good people," —
Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away."
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
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.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
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 Shropshire Lad (1896)
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
That will not shower on me.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
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 Shropshire Lad (1896)
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.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)