Quotes from Alfred Austin

Our modern pessimists cannot see a tree, a flower, or a mountain, but straightway they drop into what I may call a falling sickness, and all the beauty of the woods, fields, and sky merely suggests to them a picturesque background for their own superior sighs and sorrows.

Imagination in poetry, as distinguished from mere fancy is the transfiguring of the real or actual to the ideal.

We should be sorry to be thought guilty of dogmatism, and there is always peril in generalizations.

Through the dripping weeks that follow One another slow, and soak Summer's extinguished fire and autumn's drifting smoke.

Never did form more fairy thread the dance Than she who scours the hills to find it flowers; Never did sweeter lips chained ears entrance Than hers that move, true to its striking hours; No hands so white e'er decked the warrior's lance, As those which tend its lamp as darkness lours; And never since dear Christ expired for man, Had holy shrine so fair a sacristan.

Is life worth living? Yes, so long As Spring revives the year, And hails us with the cuckoo's song, To show that she is here; So long as May of April takes, In smiles and tears, farewell, And windflowers dapple all the brakes, And primroses the dell.

When held up to the window pane, What fixed my baby stare? The glory of the glittering rain, And newness everywhere.

Surely music is not only the food of love, but of poetry as well.

Though my verse but roam the air And murmur in the trees, You may discern a purpose there, As in music of the bees.

For great poetry, as Wordsworth teaches us in a single line, is not mere emotion, not mere subtle or sensuous singing, but "Reason in her most exalted mood."

Where has thou been all the dumb winter days When neither sunlight was nor smile of flowers, Neither life, nor love, nor frolic, Only expanse melancholic, With never a note of thy exhilarating lays?

Why from the plain truth should I shrink? In woods men feel; in towns they think. Yet, which is best? Thought, stumbling, plods Past fallen temples, vanished gods, Altars unincensed, fanes undecked, Eternal systems flown or wrecked; Through trackless centuries that grant To the poor trudge refreshment scant, Age after age, pants on to find A melting mirage of the mind. But feeling never wanders far, Content to fare with things that are.

In my song you catch at times Note sweeter far than mine, And in the tangle of my rhymes Can scent the eglantine.

Life seems like a haunted wood, where we tremble and crouch and cry.

Do you remember the winter days When we piled up the leaves and made them blaze, While the blue smoke curled, in the frosty air, Up the great wan trunks that rose gaunt and bare, And we clapped our hands, and the rotten bough Came crackling down to our feet, as now?

Once learn how Nature gardens for herself, and you will be able to spare yourself a good deal of trouble.

Realism, unadulterated Realism, which is a dangerous experiment in prose, is a sheer impossibility in poetry; for in poetry what is offered us, and what delights us, is not realistic but ideal representation. No doubt the very music of verse is part of the means whereby this ideal representation is effected; but it will not of itself suffice, as may easily be proved by reciting mere nonsense verses in which the rhythm or music may be faultless.

If the Crusades were not politics, we should have to narrow the meaning of the word very considerably.

If Conservatism may, in a non-party sense, claim Shakespeare as an authority in its favor, in Milton, on the other hand, I suppose Liberalism again in a non-party sense would recognize a support.

Sheer lyricism just now is overmuch the mode. It is all very nice and pleasant in its way, and within bounds, but one can have too much of a good thing, and one does not want poetry to become vox et præterea nihil. It is a fashion, doubtless, that will pass.

I think the proposition still holds good that men of letters who aspire to high distinction do well not to disdain altogether the politics of their time.

It is the business of poets to deal with the relation of the individual to himself, to the silent uniform forces of nature, and to other individuals, singly and collectively: in other words, to be dramatic or epic, as well as lyrical or idyllic.

Hush! or you'll wake her. Softly tread! She slumbers in her little bed. What do I see? A coffin! Dead? Yes, dead at break of morning.

Your voice would have silenced merle and thrush, And the rose outbloomed would have blushed to blush, And Summer, seeing you, paused, and known That the glow of your beauty outshone its own.