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
life men thinking
Is life worth living? Yes, so long as there is wrong to right. So long as faith with freedom reigns and loyal hope survives, And gracious charity remains to leaven lowly lives; While there is only one untrodden tract for intellect or will, And men are free to think and act, Life is worth living still.
horse food garden
Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.
dream rose sound
My virgin sense of sound was steeped In the music of young streams; And roses through the casement peeped, And scented all my dreams.
mistake garden society
Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.
flower winter dumb
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?
gleam faces vain
In vain would science scan and trace Firmly her aspect. All the while, There gleams upon her far-off face A vague unfathomable smile.
dream stars fall
Falling stars are high examples sent To warn, not lure. Gross fancy says they are Substantial meteors; but that is not so. They are the merest phantasies of Night, When she's asleep, and, dimly visited By past effects, she dreams of Lucifer Hurled out of Heaven.
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.
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.
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.