I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.

Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault; It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.

Good religious poetry... is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.

But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts. And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts

Mithridates, he died old. Housman's passage is based on the belief of the ancients that Mithridates the Great [c. 135-63 B.C.] had so saturated his body with poisons that none could injure him. When captured by the Romans he tried in vain to poison himself, then ordered a Gallic mercenary to kill him.

There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.

The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.