Alfred Austin
Alfred Austin
Alfred Austin DLwas an English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, after an interval following the death of Tennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or refused the honour. It was claimed that he was being rewarded for his support for the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury in the General Election of 1895. Austin’s poems are little-remembered today, his most popular work being prose idylls celebrating nature...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 May 1835
lips lessons maidens
Perhaps a maiden's bashfulness is more A matron's lesson than our lips aver.
flower moving warrior
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.
summer autumn fire
Through the dripping weeks that follow One another slow, and soak Summer's extinguished fire and autumn's drifting smoke.
rain hazards sunny
From sunny woof and cloudy weft Fell rain in sheets; so, to myself I hummed these hazard rhymes, and left The learned volume on the shelf.
flower simple cities
Tis true among fields and woods I sing, Aloof from cities--that my poor strains Were born, like the simple flowers you bring, In English meadows and English lanes.
january cradle pale
Pale January lay In its cradle day by day Dead or living, hard to say.
garden self-made made-it
No one can rightly call his garden his own unless he himself made it.
life woods cry
Life seems like a haunted wood, where we tremble and crouch and cry.
life feels stills
He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still.
morning spirit
The bright incarnate spirit of the Morn.
nature law purpose
Doth Nature draw me, 'tis because, Unto my seeming, there doth lurk A lawlessness about her laws, More mood than purpose in her work.
sweet nature winning
If Nature built by rule and square, Than man what wiser would she be? What wins us is her careless care, And sweet unpunctuality.
passion feet shade
We are all alike, and we love to keep passion aglow at our feet, Like one that sitteth in shade and complacently smiles at the heat.
humility gardening
There is no gardening without humility