There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.
A. E. HousmanRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a tension between the call to communal worship and the individual's inner hesitance.
In this quote, A. E. Housman captures the conflict between societal expectations and personal desires. The bells of the church symbolize a communal call to worship, while the speaker's desire for the bells to be silent suggests an internal struggle with the idea of conformity and obligation versus personal belief and action. Ultimately, the speaker acknowledges the call and contemplates participation despite the noise, highlighting a nuanced relationship between individual choice and community influence.
Themes
BellsChurchWorshipCommunityIndividuality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used during a discussion on the tension between societal expectations and personal beliefs.
More from A. E. Housman
All quotes βWho made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.
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I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.
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Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
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And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
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Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking_x000D_ _x000D_ Spins the heavy world around.
A. E. HousmanRead
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