"The emotional nature of his work fulfilled his own ideal. "I think that to transfuse emotion," he wrote in The Name and Nature of Poetry, "to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer—is the peculiar function of poetry." He judged it by the size of the lump it brought to his throat. It is in the light of his own statement that the verses of A Shropshire Lad should be considered. They are less the expression of profound experience than of common emotion intensely felt. The sad and bitter in life stirred him to write. The passing of time and time's revenges, injustice, fickleness of love, beauty's transience, and, over all, the shadow of death—with these he is preoccupied and from them his emotion springs... He cultivated the luxury of sadness, careful never to let it escape him, and he achieved neither more nor less than his ideal."
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Atheists from EnglandEssayists from EnglandPoets from EnglandUniversity of Cambridge facultyCritics from the United Kingdom
Original Language: English
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Sources
A. F. Allison, 'The Poetry of A. E. Housman', The Review of English Studies, Vol. 19, No. 75 (July 1943), pp. 276-277
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A._E._Housman
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A. E. Housman
Alfred Edward Housman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), usually known as A.E. Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems '.
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