There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.
A. E. HousmanRead
I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The essence of poetry is elusive and cannot be easily defined, much like a dog instinctively recognizing a rat without being able to articulate it.
This quote suggests that poetry, much like instinctual understanding, resists formal definition. A. E. Housman compares the difficulty of defining poetry to a terrier's innate ability to find a rat; both are rooted in deeper, instinctual comprehension rather than straightforward explanation.
Themes
PoetryDefinitionInstinctArtLanguage
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary discussion about the nature of art, this quote illustrates the intangibility of artistic expression.
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.
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
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