Alfred Austin Quotes
The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.
Faded smiles oft linger in the face, While grief's first flakes fall silent on the heart!
There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.
Though my verse but roam the air And murmur in the trees, You may discern a purpose there, As in music of the bees.
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.
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?
My virgin sense of sound was steeped In the music of young streams; And roses through the casement peeped, And scented all my dreams.
In my song you catch at times Note sweeter far than mine, And in the tangle of my rhymes Can scent the eglantine.
Doth Nature draw me, 'tis because, Unto my seeming, there doth lurk A lawlessness about her laws, More mood than purpose in her work.
Through the dripping weeks that follow One another slow, and soak Summer's extinguished fire and autumn's drifting smoke.
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.
When held up to the window pane, What fixed my baby stare? The glory of the glittering rain, And newness everywhere.
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.
If Nature built by rule and square, Than man what wiser would she be? What wins us is her careless care, And sweet unpunctuality.
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.
In vain would science scan and trace Firmly her aspect. All the while, There gleams upon her far-off face A vague unfathomable smile.
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.
Imagination in poetry, as distinguished from mere fancy is the transfiguring of the real or actual to the ideal.
No verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as poetry whatever other qualities it may possess.
