Love’s Fitfulness

You say that I am fitful. Sweet, 'tis true;
But 'tis that I your fitfulness obey.
If you are April, how can I be May,
Or flaunt bright roses when you wear sad rue?
Shine like the sun, and my sky will be blue;
Sing, and the lark shall envy me my lay:
I do but follow where you point the way,
And what I feel you doing, straight must do.
The wind might just as well reproach the vane,
As you upbraid me for my shiftings, dear:
Blow from the south, and south I shall remain;
If you keep fixed, be sure I shall not veer.
Nay, on your change my changes so depend,
If ends your love, why then my love must end.

poem by Alfred Austin
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Love’s Wisdom

Now on the summit of Love's topmost peak
Kiss we and part; no farther can we go:
And better death than we from high to low
Should dwindle or decline from strong to weak.
We have found all, there is no more to seek;
All have we proved, no more is there to know;
And Time could only tutor us to eke
Out rapture's warmth with custom's afterglow.
We cannot keep at such a height as this;
And even straining souls like ours inhale
But once in life so rarefied a bliss.
What if we lingered till love's breath should fail!
Heaven of my Earth! one more celestial kiss,
Then down by separate pathways to the vale.

poem by Alfred Austin
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Madonna

Let me, calm face, remain
For ever in these sweet sequestered nooks,
Remote from pain,
Where leafy laurustinus overlooks
The blue abounding main.

Ne'er will I crave, I vow,
Your loveliness despite, that we may stand
More nigh than now;
You, with the fresh-plucked roses in your hand,
And I with inclined brow.

With air, and sea, and sky,
And penetrative music on the beach,
All that is high,
And far, and holy, and beyond our reach,
I you identify.

Then, lady, let me stay,
Here where no storm nor surge of discontent

[...] Read more

poem by Alfred Austin
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Nocturnal Vigils

Why do you chide me that, when mortals yield
To slumber's charm, from sleep I ask no boon,
But from my casement watch the maimëd moon
Fainting behind her ineffectual shield:
Unto the chime by stately planets pealed
My song, my soul, my very self attune,
And nightly see, what none can see at noon,
The runic volume of the sky unsealed?
Haply the hour may come when grateful Night
Will these brief vigils endlessly repay,
And, on the dwindling of my earthly day,
Keep, like her stars, my heavenly fancies bright;
And glorious dreamings, shrouded now from sight,
Dawn out of darkness, not to sleep for aye.

poem by Alfred Austin
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Take not the Gods to task, for they are wise

Take not the Gods to task, for they are wise
When they refuse no less than when they grant.
Thou canst but know, with all thy bursting sighs,
What is thy whim, but never what thy want.
Did they, to smite thine importunity,
Answer each swift unregulated prayer,
Oh, what accursèd trudger woulds thou be,
And what a world of fardels have to bear!
Check thy lament. The days will surely come,
Thou wilt regard each crossed or shattered hope,
As now thou dost poor Philip's broken drum,
Or little Rosie's tangled skipping-rope.
Confide in Time, who will, as years expire,
Indulge, or else annihilate, desire.

poem by Alfred Austin
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Time’s Defence

``Why am I deemed an enemy of men
Who would beyond Life's limit life prolong?
If they believe that they will live again,
How can it be that I have done them wrong?
Is it not I who rout the Winter snows,
And Spring's melodious symphonies renew,
Bring back the blush unto the budding rose,
And christen Summer's birth with morning dew?
'Tis I that ring the silvery nuptial peal,
When streams the Bridal up the rustic nave,
And if around the bier where mourners kneel
I toll the passing-bell and dig the grave,
From death and grief I half dispel the gloom,
Inscribing words of hope upon the loved one's tomb.''

poem by Alfred Austin
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To Robert Louis Stevenson

I never saw you, never grasped your hand,
Nor wrote nor read lines absence loves to trace,
Ne'er with you sate in your accustomed place,
Nor waited for your coming on sea or land.
But this I know, if along unseen strand,
Or anywhere in God's eternal space,
You heard my voice, or I beheld your face,
That we should greet, and both would understand.
So, till that hour, wherever you abide,
On circling star, or interstellar sea,
Or where, from man's imagination free,
There moves no planet and there sounds no tide,
Welcome, as though from friend long known and tried,
This gift of loving fellowship from me.

poem by Alfred Austin
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A Farewell To Youth

Ere that I say farewell to youth, and take
The homely road that leads to life's decline,
Let me be sure again I shall not pine
To taste the bliss you bid me to forsake:
That Spring's returning raptures will not wake
Too late repentance for abjuring mine,
Nor the old sweets I pledge me to resign
Behind them leave the bitterness of ache.
Yet is there nothing of one's generous prime
To bear me kindred company to the end,
Some passionate longing, some belief sublime,
Some wrong to right, some failure to befriend?
Leave me but these, I care not where I wend,
But down life's slope go hand-in-hand with Time.

poem by Alfred Austin
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Resignation

Since we the march of Time can not arrest,
Keep you in step with him till Time shall end:
Thus will you journey with more easeful breast,
Nor mar the rhythm that you cannot mend.
Nor ever yearn impatiently to reap
Harvest allotted unto mellower years,
But, having sown the seed, take care to keep
Its growth from tares till soaring stem appears.
Neither, when Summer from your life shall wane,
And Autumn fruit keep dropping from the bough,
Look back and sigh regretfully in vain
For joys no longer seasonable now:
Thus will your hours make music to the end,
And Life, you loved so, become Death your friend.

poem by Alfred Austin
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Church—Door Should Still Stand Open

Church-doors should still stand open, night and day,
Open to all who come for praise or prayer,
Laden with gift of love or load of care,
Nimbused with gold, or flecked with locks of gray,
Mother, or snow-white bride, or pallid clay,
The blithe, the sad, the uncomely as the fair,
Each on his secret errand wending there,
Nor even the mighty and strong be turned away.
And so the poet's heart should ever be
Portal of joy and welcomer of woe,
That makes the deaf to hear, the blind to see,
Open confessional for high and low,
An unshut shrine where all may come and go,
And by their tears an enriched sanctuary.

poem by Alfred Austin
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