There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.
A. E. HousmanRead
June suns, you cannot store them To warm the winter's cold, The lad that hopes for heaven Shall fill his mouth with mould.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the transient nature of joy and the futility of trying to retain happiness for future times.
A. E. Housman's quote captures the ephemeral quality of summer joys and the futility of trying to hold onto them for future comfort. It suggests that while the beauty and warmth of summer cannot be stored for the coldness of winter, one should not place hope in the distant rewards of life without acknowledging the reality of the present—implying that dreams of heaven might ultimately lead to disappointment if one neglects the inevitable hardships of life.
Themes
TransienceHappinessHopeLifeReality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a graduation speech to remind students to appreciate the present moment.
More from A. E. Housman
All quotes →Who 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.
A. E. HousmanRead
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.
A. E. HousmanRead
Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
A. E. HousmanRead
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
A. E. HousmanRead
Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking_x000D_ _x000D_ Spins the heavy world around.
A. E. HousmanRead
Similar quotes
All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.
Teresa Of AvilaRead
The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
Albert J. NockRead
Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.
Robert Baden-PowellRead
A 'mistake' is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.
John CageRead
Before this moment I'd lived as a mind. Body, heart, soul, intellect, so we care ourselves into parts. But the whole of us, what can it be?
Denis JohnsonRead
The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiRead