Alfred Austin Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think.

Alfred Austin
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.

Alfred Austin
LUCIFER: Only the chemistry of love can make Two atoms one.

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.

Alfred Austin
A garden that one makes oneself becomes associated with one's personal history and that of one's friends, interwoven with one's tastes, preferences and character and constitutes a sort of unwritten autobiography.

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

Alfred Austin
In vain would science scan and trace Firmly her aspect. All the while, There gleams upon her far-off face A vague unfathomable smile.

Alfred Austin
No one can rightly call his garden his own unless he himself made it.

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

Alfred Austin
He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still.

Alfred Austin
What are these! Shells flung far and wide By winter's snow fast-ebbing tide In language called, for him who sees But grossly, wood-anemones.

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

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

Alfred Austin
Doth Nature draw me, 'tis because, Unto my seeming, there doth lurk A lawlessness about her laws, More mood than purpose in her work.

Alfred Austin
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.

Alfred Austin
Flash'd from his bed the electric tidings came,
'He is no better, he is much the same.'

Alfred Austin
So, timely you came, and well you chose, You came when most needed, my winter rose. From the snow I pluck you, and fondly press Your leaves 'twixt the leaves of my leaflessness.

Alfred Austin
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.

Alfred Austin
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.

Alfred Austin
Perhaps a maiden's bashfulness is more A matron's lesson than our lips aver.

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

Alfred Austin
Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society...

Alfred Austin
Faded smiles oft linger in the face, While grief's first flakes fall silent on the heart!

Alfred Austin
For there is no gardening without humility, an assiduous willingness to learn, and a cheerful readiness to confess you were mistaken.

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

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

Alfred Austin
Nature is continually sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder. But, by the due exercise of patience and diligence, they may work their way to the top again.

Alfred Austin