Quotes from Alfred Austin

My virgin sense of sound was steeped In the music of young streams; And roses through the casement peeped, And scented all my dreams.

Most patriotic verse, however spirited, is verse only, nothing or little more.

It is not the business of a man of letters to take his politics either from a Monarch or a Mob, or to push his fortunes—slightly to alter a celebrated phrase—by those services which demagogues render to crowds.

Now frowns the sky, the air bites bleak, The young boughs rock, the old trunks creak, And fast before the following gale Come slanting drops, then slashing hail, As keen as sword, as thick as shot. Nay, do not cower, but heed them not! For these one neither flies nor stirs; They are but April skirmishers, Thrown out to cover the advance Of gleaming spear and glittering lance, With which the sunshine scours amain Heaven, earth, and air, and routs the rain.

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.

Though what is understood as religious sentiment comes next to the love of individuals for each other in the extent of its influence, it has produced much verse, but, it must be allowed, little poetry, the reason probably being that the religious sentiment of the few who are endowed with the gift of writing poetry differs from that of the average "religious" person.

Piping a simple song for thinking hearts, is all very well. But it will not do to say, or to suggest, or to allow it to be inferred, that doing this makes a man as great a poet.

She was so steeped in wickedness that she promulgated laws permitting others to act as she herself did, in order to annul the stigma that would otherwise have been attached to her.

The poet, no doubt, has to learn by suffering, but having learnt, he has then, in my opinion, to help others not to be miserable, but to be happy.

The Poet, too, has a garden, and one by no means to be disdained; and Veronica told me that when, the other day, some tactless person asked him which of his works he likes best, he replied, "My garden."

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.

If the love and pursuit of literature do not make a man more independent in character, more disinterested in his reasonings, more elevated in his views, they will not have done for him what I should have expected from them.

Sycophants, therefore, can dance attendance on the Many as easily and as mischievously as on the One.

The permanent passions of mankind--love, religion, patriotism, humanitarianism, hate, revenge, ambition; the conflict between free will and fate; the rise and fall of empires--these are all great themes, and, if greatly treated, and in accordance with the essentials applicable to all poetry, may produce poetry of the loftiest kind.

Almost as essential to poetry, and equally as regards poetry of the loftiest and poetry of the lowliest kind, is lucidity, or clearness of expression. No poet of much account is ever obscure, unless the text happens to be corrupt.

Have you never, when waves were breaking, watched children at sport on the beach, With their little feet tempting the foam-fringe, till with stronger and further reach Than they dreamed of, a billow comes bursting, how they turn and scamper and screech!

What real man of letters that ever ventured into the arid and somewhat vulgar domain of Party-politics has not felt the same feeling of revulsion, the same longing for the water-brooks?

But I trust I shall not give offence if I say that the number of my countrymen and countrywomen who lay stress on the artistic manner, whether in verse or prose, in which an opinion is expressed, compared with the number of those who value poetry or prose chiefly because it expresses the opinions they value and the sentiments they cherish, is very small.

In Shakespeare, as we might have expected, the masculine note and the feminine note are heard in perfect harmony.

No verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as poetry whatever other qualities it may possess.

No first-rate poet ever went mad, or ever committed suicide, though one or two, no doubt, have happened to die comparatively young.

If Nature built by rule and square, Than man what wiser would she be? What wins us is her careless care, And sweet unpunctuality.

The most generous critic, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry.

Is the conclusion then that a pessimistic criticism of life necessarily makes a poet greater than another poet who criticizes it from an optimistic point of view? Not in the least. The consideration—we do not say to the positive philosopher, to the historian, to the moralist, but—to the disinterested lover of poetry, is simply irrelevant.