“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 whileBefore I die for ever.”

A.E. Housman
Love Happiness Positive

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“All knots that lovers tieAre tied to sever.Here shall your sweetheart lie,Untrue for ever.”


“When the lad for longing sighs,Mute and dull of cheer and pale,If at death's own door he lies,Maiden, you can heal his ail.Lovers' ills are all to buy:The wan look, the hollow tone,The hung head, the sunken eye,You can have them for your own.Buy them, buy them: eve and mornLovers' ills are all to sell.Then you can lie down forlorn;But the lover will be well.”


“Along the field as we came byA year ago, my love and I,The aspen over stile and stoneWas talking to itself alone.'Oh who are these that kiss and pass?A country lover and his lass;Two lovers looking to be wed;And time shall put them both to bed,But she shall lie with earth above,And he beside another love.'And sure enough beneath the treeThere walks another love with me, And overhead the aspen heavesIts rainy-sounding silver leaves;And I spell nothing in their stir,But now perhaps they speak to her,And plain for her to understandThey talk about a time at handWhen I shall sleep with clover clad,And she beside another lad.”


“How clear, how lovely bright,How beautiful to sight Those beams of morning play;How heaven laughs out with gleeWhere, like a bird set free,Up from the eastern sea Soars the delightful day.To-day I shall be strong,No more shall yield to wrong, Shall squander life no more;Days lost, I know not how,I shall retrieve them now;Now I shall keep the vow I never kept before.Ensanguining the skiesHow heavily it dies Into the west away;Past touch and sight and soundNot further to be found,How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day.”


“When I watch the living meet,And the moving pageant fileWarm and breathing through the streetWhere I lodge a little while,If the heats of hate and lustIn the house of flesh are strong,Let me mind the house of dustWhere my sojourn shall be long.In the nation that is notNothing stands that stood before;There revenges are forgot,And the hater hates no more;Lovers lying two and twoAsk not whom they sleep beside,And the bridegroom all night throughNever turns him to the bride.”


“Shake hands, we shall never be friends; give over:I only vex you the more I try.All's wrong that ever I've done and said,And nought to help it in this dull head:Shake hands, goodnight, goodbye.But if you come to a road where danger Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share,Be good to the lad that loves you trueAnd the soul that was born to die for you,And whistle and I'll be there.”