Alfred Austin

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) was an English poet laureate.

Sourced

Poem "Is Life Worth Living?" [1]

• 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;

• Is life worth living? Yes, so long
  As there is wrong to right,
  Wail of the weak against the strong,
  Or tyranny to fight;

• So long as faith with freedom reigns
  And loyal hope survives,
  And gracious charity remains
  To leaven lowly lives;
  While there is one untrodden tract
  For intellect or will,
  And men are free to think and act,
  Life is worth living still.

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

• Show me your garden and i shall tell you what you are.

  ** Criminal Minds Season 8, November 2012

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• O'er the wires the electric message came,
  "He is no better; he is much the same."
  • An 1871 poem on the illness of the Prince of Wales, although there is some doubt that Austin actually wrote this part. That classic compendium "The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse" (2d ed. 1930; Capricorn paperback 1962) includes a dozen quotations from Austin but attributes this particular couplet (p. 17) to a "university poet unknown." It also provides a metrically more accurate first line, "Across the wires the gloomy message came," plus "not" for "no" in the second line.