Alfred Austin
Alfred Austin DL (30 May 1835 – 2 June 1913) was an English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896.
Quotes
- Show me your garden, provided
it be your own, and I will tell you what you are
like.- The Garden that I Love (1905)
- O'er the wires the electric message came,
"He is no better; he is much the same."- On the Illness of the Prince of Wales (1910)
- 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.
- The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.
- As quoted in Growing with the Seasons (2008) by Frank & Vicky Giannangelo, p. 115.
Is Life Worth Living? (1896)
Is Life Worth Living? (1896)
- 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.
Prose Papers on Poetry (1910)
- No verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as poetry whatever other qualities it may possess.
- Imagination in poetry, as distinguished from mere fancy is the transfiguring of the real or actual to the ideal.
