English poet (1835-1913)
Politics do not necessarily mean party politics, though in this country, at this moment, the one runs dangerously near to implying the other.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
There are despotisms that are corrupt, or what is equally bad, vulgar and servile, without being brilliant; and I am not alone in entertaining the fear lest unadulterated Democracy—that is to say, the passions, interests, and power of a homogeneous majority, acting without any regard to the passions and interests that exist outside of it, and purged of all respect for intellect that does not provide it with specious reasons and feed it with constant adulation—should inflict upon us a despotism under which, again, there will be no room in the domain of politics for men of letters who respect themselves.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
When held up to the window pane,
What fixed my baby stare?
The glory of the glittering rain,
And newness everywhere.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"A Birthday", Lyrical Poems
Life seems like a haunted wood, where we tremble and crouch and cry.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"A Woman's Apology", Soliloquies in Song
The most generous critic, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
The permanent passions of mankind--love, religion, patriotism, humanitarianism, hate, revenge, ambition; the conflict between free will and fate; the rise and fall of empires--these are all great themes, and, if greatly treated, and in accordance with the essentials applicable to all poetry, may produce poetry of the loftiest kind.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Passing from the pages of Chaucer to those of Spenser is like passing from some cheery tavern where the ale is good and the jokes are excellent, but a trifle coarse, and the company diverting but a little mixed, to the banqueting-hall of some stately palace, where the wines and meats are of the choicest, where all the guests are of high degree, the women all fair, the men all courtly, and where fine manners and dignified speech leave no place for loud lewd laughter or even for homely familiarity.
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
Some of the finest poetry ever written upon life is to be found surely in the Old Testament.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
But I trust I shall not give offence if I say that the number of my countrymen and countrywomen who lay stress on the artistic manner, whether in verse or prose, in which an opinion is expressed, compared with the number of those who value poetry or prose chiefly because it expresses the opinions they value and the sentiments they cherish, is very small.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
I should be surprised to find any one doubting that during the last few years a wave of disillusion, of doubt, misgiving, and despondency has passed over the world. We are no longer so confident as we were in the abstract wisdom and practical working of our Institutions; we no longer express ourselves with such certainty concerning the social and moral advantages of our material discoveries; we entertain growing anxiety as to the future of our Commerce; many persons have questioned the very foundations of religious belief, and numbers have taken refuge from conflicting creeds in avowed Agnosticism, or the confession that we know and can know absolutely nothing concerning what it had long been assumed it most behooves us to know. One by one, all the fondly cherished theories of life, society and Empire; our belief in Free Trade as the evangelist of peace, the solution of economic difficulties and struggles, and the sure foundation of national greatness; all the sources of our satisfaction with ourselves, our confidence in our capacity to reconcile the rivalry of capital and labor, to repress drunkenness, to abolish pauperism, to form a fraternal confederation with our Colonies, and to be the example to the whole world of wealth, wisdom, and virtue, are one by one deserting us. We no longer believe that Great Exhibitions will disarm the inherent ferocity of mankind, that a judicious administration of the Poor Law will gradually empty our workhouses, or that an elastic law of Divorce will correct the aberrations of human passion and solve all the problems of the hearth. The boastfulness, the sanguine expectations, the confident prophecies of olden times are exchanged for hesitating speculations and despondent whispers. We no longer seem to know whither we are marching, and many appear to think that we are marching to perdition. We have curtailed the authority of kings; we have narrowed the political competence of aristocracies; we have widened the suffrage, till we can hardly widen it any further; we have introduced the ballot, abolished bribery and corruption, and called into play a more active municipal life; we have multiplied our railways, and the pace of our travel has been greatly accelerated. Telegraph and telephone traverse the land. Surgical operations of the most difficult and dangerous character are performed successfully by the aid of anesthetics, without pain to the patient. We have forced from heaven more light than ever Prometheus did; with the result that we transcend him likewise in our pain. No one would assert that we are happier, more cheerful, more full of hope, than our predecessors, or that we confront the Future with greater confidence. All our Progress, so far, has ended in Pessimism more or less pronounced; by some expressed more absolutely, by some with more moderation; but felt by all, permeating every utterance, and infiltrating into every stratum of thought.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
What real man of letters that ever ventured into the arid and somewhat vulgar domain of Party-politics has not felt the same feeling of revulsion, the same longing for the water-brooks?
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
If the love and pursuit of literature do not make a man more independent in character, more disinterested in his reasonings, more elevated in his views, they will not have done for him what I should have expected from them.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
That politicians pure and simple are becoming less imbued with the literary spirit is, I think, certain, and it is to be regretted, because polite Politics are almost as much to be desired as polite Literature.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
If Conservatism may, in a non-party sense, claim Shakespeare as an authority in its favor, in Milton, on the other hand, I suppose Liberalism again in a non-party sense would recognize a support.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
The French Revolution, as is probably the case with every great political, religious, or social movement, was in its action partly beneficial, partly detrimental. It abolished many monstrous abuses, it propounded afresh some long-neglected or violated truths; and it gave a vigorous impulse to human hope. But it was perhaps the most violent of all the great movements recorded in human annals. Accordingly, it destroyed over much, and it promised over much. In all probability, action and reaction are as nicely balanced in the intellectual and moral world as in the physical, and exaggerated hopes must have their equivalent in correlated and co-equal disappointment. I sometimes think that the nineteenth century now closed will be regarded in the fullness of time as a colossal egotist, that began by thinking somewhat too highly of itself, its prospects, its capacity, its performances, and ended by thinking somewhat too meanly of what I have called things in general, or those permanent conditions of man, life, and society, which no amount of Revolutions, French or otherwise, will avail to get rid of.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Sheer lyricism just now is overmuch the mode. It is all very nice and pleasant in its way, and within bounds, but one can have too much of a good thing, and one does not want poetry to become vox et præterea nihil. It is a fashion, doubtless, that will pass.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
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
"A Birthday", Lyrical Poems
The present age can hardly be reproached either with an absence of admirers or with a lack of self-complacency. Even its most fervid flatterers, however, ever and anon admit that it exhibits a few trifling defects; and among these is sometimes named a diminution of popular interest in poetic literature. Some have attributed this decline to one cause, some to another; but the fact can hardly be disputed. The Heavenly Muse is suffering a partial eclipse. The gross and material substance of the earth has somehow got between her and the Soul, that source and centre of her gentle light; and some enthusiasts aver that with the progress of Science and the production at will of its precise and steadfast lights, fitful luminaries of night may henceforth be dispensed with. But spiritual eclipses, though not to be predicted with the accuracy with which physical eclipses are foretold, and though unfortunately they endure for longer periods, are equally transitory; and the nineteenth century was scarcely original, nor will its successor prove to be correct, in fancying that the garish and obedient flame of material philosophy will prove a satisfactory substitute for the precious, if precarious illumination of the Spirit.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
A poet’s ideals of what women should be, and often are, is shown not only by what he extols, but by what he condemns.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus