Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"[Poetry] is that which if you recite to the mirror in the morning your bristles will stand when you shave." -- A.E. Housman (b. 1859-03-26, d. 1936-04-30), as quoted in On Film-making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director by Alexander Mackendrick

"Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act...The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach." -- A.E. Housman, The Name and Nature of Poetry (1933), cited at Wikiquote

[I like the first quotation better, but was unable to find any other instance of it than the one I linked to, so I'm uncertain whether it's a direct quotation of another work or occasion when Housman described his test of great poetry, or Mackendrick's paraphrase of the version cited at Wikiquote.]