“Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are.Come, my friend, and remember that the rich have butlers and no friends,And we have friends and no butlers.(excerpt from 'The Garrett')”

“My pawing over the ancients and semi-ancients has been one struggle to find out what has been done, once and for all, better than it can ever be done again, and to find out what remains for us to do, and plenty does remain, for if we still feel the same emotions as those who launched a thousand ships, it is quite certain that we came on these feelings differently, through different nuances, by different intellectual gradations. Each age has its own abounding gifts yet only some ages transmute them into matters of duration.”

“When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogsI am compelled to concludeThat man is the superior animal.When I consider the curious habits of manI confess, my friend, I am puzzled”

“No one knows, at sight a masterpiece.And give up verse, my boy,There's nothing in it.Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me:Don't kick against the pricks,Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your gameAnd died, there's nothing in it.”

“L'artGreen arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.”

“There is the subtler music, the clear lightWhere time burns back about th'eternal embers.We are not shut from the thousand heavens:Lo, there are many gods whom we have seen,Folk of unearthly fashion, places splendid,Bulwarks of beryl and of chrysophrase.Sapphire Benacus, in thy mists and theeNature herself's turned metaphysical,Who can look at that blue and not believe?”

“Song in the Manner of Housman" O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera.... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera....”