English poet (1835-1913)
We should be sorry to be thought guilty of dogmatism, and there is always peril in generalizations.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Our modern pessimists cannot see a tree, a flower, or a mountain, but straightway they drop into what I may call a falling sickness, and all the beauty of the woods, fields, and sky merely suggests to them a picturesque background for their own superior sighs and sorrows.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
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
Madonna's Child
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.
ALFRED AUSTIN
Savonarola
Through the dripping weeks that follow
One another slow, and soak
Summer's extinguished fire and autumn's drifting smoke.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"A Spring Carol", Soliloquies in Song
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;
So long as May of April takes,
In smiles and tears, farewell,
And windflowers dapple all the brakes,
And primroses the dell.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"Is Life Worth Living?", Lyrical Poems
Imagination in poetry, as distinguished from mere fancy is the transfiguring of the real or actual to the ideal.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry
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
"A Birthday", Lyrical Poems
Your voice would have silenced merle and thrush,
And the rose outbloomed would have blushed to blush,
And Summer, seeing you, paused, and known
That the glow of your beauty outshone its own.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"My Winter Rose", Lyrical Poems
Sycophants, therefore, can dance attendance on the Many as easily and as mischievously as on the One.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
If it be urged that Dante, and even Shakespeare, do not always yield up their meaning to the reader at once, the allegation must be traversed absolutely. The immediate apprehension of the meaning of the Vita Nuova and the Divina Commedia presupposes an intimate acquaintance with the various dialects of the Italian language existing in Dante’s time, and likewise with the erudition he scatters so profusely, if allusively, throughout his verse. But to the Italian readers of Dante, even superficially acquainted with those dialects, and adequate masters of the theology and the astronomy of Dante’s time, those poems present no difficulty. Of Shakespeare, the greatest of all the poets in our language, let it be granted that he is not unoften one of the most careless and even most slovenly; but rarely is he so to the obscuring of his meaning, and never save casually, and in some brief passage. Yet let it not be inferred that I am of opinion that the full meaning of the greatest passages in the greatest poems is to be seized all at once, or by the average reader at all. That is "deeper than ever plummet sounded," though Tennyson’s "indolent reviewer" apparently imagines that he at once fathoms the more intellectual poetry of his time. There can be but few readers, and possibly none but poets themselves, or persons who, to quote Tennyson again, "have the great poetic heart," who master the full significance of Hamlet or of the tersely told story of Francesca da Rimini. But the whole world at once understood the more obvious tenor of both, and is not puzzled by either. There is a sliding scale of understanding, as there is a sliding scale of inspiration. "We needs must love the highest when we see it"; but "when we see it" is an important qualification in the statement.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Why from the plain truth should I shrink?
In woods men feel; in towns they think.
Yet, which is best? 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.
But feeling never wanders far,
Content to fare with things that are.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"A Defence of English Spring", Lyrical Poems
I think the proposition still holds good that men of letters who aspire to high distinction do well not to disdain altogether the politics of their time.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
In protesting, therefore, against Pessimism in Poetry, I am only returning to the oldest, soundest, and noblest traditions in English Literature, and in the English character. I trust no one supposes I am denying or that I am insensible to the existence of pain, woe, sadness, loss, even anguish and acute suffering, as integral and inevitable elements in life; and if poetry did not take note of these, and give to them pathetic and adequate expression, poetry would not be, as it is, coextensive with life, would not be the Paraclete or Comforter, with the gift of tongues. In poetry the note of sorrow will be, and must be, occasionally, and indeed frequently struck; it should not be the dominant key, much less the only key in which the poet tunes his song. There is much in our modern civilization that is very unbeautiful, nay, that is downright ugly, whether we look on it with the eye of the artist or with the vision of the moralist. Moreover, I perceive—who could fail to perceive?—that we have in these days some very dark and difficult social problems to solve. Then let the poet come to our assistance by accompanying us with musical encouragement. For, remember, the poet has to make harmony, not out of language only, but out of life as well. I was once looking at a violin, a very lovely violin, a Stradivarius of great value and exquisite tone, and I asked the lady to whom it belonged of what wood the various parts of the instrument was composed. She told me, with much loving detail; but, she said, "I ought to add that I have been told no violin can be made of supreme quality unless the wood be taken from that side of the tree which faces south." It is the same with the Poet. If he is to give us the sweetest, the most sonorous, and the truest notes, his nature must have a bias towards the sunny side.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
It is the business of poets to deal with the relation of the individual to himself, to the silent uniform forces of nature, and to other individuals, singly and collectively: in other words, to be dramatic or epic, as well as lyrical or idyllic.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Do you remember the winter days
When we piled up the leaves and made them blaze,
While the blue smoke curled, in the frosty air,
Up the great wan trunks that rose gaunt and bare,
And we clapped our hands, and the rotten bough
Came crackling down to our feet, as now?
ALFRED AUSTIN
"The Last Night", At the Gate of the Convent and Other Poems
Realism, unadulterated Realism, which is a dangerous experiment in prose, is a sheer impossibility in poetry; for in poetry what is offered us, and what delights us, is not realistic but ideal representation. No doubt the very music of verse is part of the means whereby this ideal representation is effected; but it will not of itself suffice, as may easily be proved by reciting mere nonsense verses in which the rhythm or music may be faultless.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
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.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
But there is an attitude towards life which does give a poet the chance at least of being greater than either a poet who criticizes life as a pessimist, or than a poet who criticizes it as an optimist. That attitude is one neither of pessimism nor of optimism; indeed, not a criticism of life at all, or at least not such a criticism of life as to leave it open to any one to declare that it is healthful and true, or that it is insalubrious and false. Will Mr. Arnold tell us what is Shakespeare’s criticism of life? Is it pessimistic or optimistic? We are almost alarmed at asking the question; for who knows that, in doing so, we may not be sowing the seeds of a controversy as long and as interminable as the controversy respecting the moral purpose, the criticism of life in Hamlet? Once started, the controversy will go on for ever, precisely because there is no way of ending it. What constitutes, not the superiority, but the comparative inferiority, of Byron and Wordsworth alike, is their excessive criticism of life. They criticize life overmuch. It is the foible of each of them. What constitutes the superiority of Shakespeare is, that he does not so much criticize life, as present it. He holds the mirror up to nature, and is content to do so, showing it with all its beautiful and all its ugly features, and with perfect dispassionateness. Hence his unequalled greatness.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Once learn how Nature gardens for herself, and you will be able to spare yourself a good deal of trouble.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Garden that I Love