To England
Men deemed thee fallen, did they? fallen like Rome,
Coiled into self to foil a Vandal throng:
Not wholly shorn of strength, but vainly strong;
Weaned from thy fame by a too happy home,
Scanning the ridges of thy teeming loam,
Counting thy flocks, humming thy harvest song,
Callous, because thyself secure, 'gainst wrong,
Behind the impassable fences of the foam!
The dupes! Thou dost but stand erect, and lo!
The nations cluster round; and while the horde
Of wolfish backs slouch homeward to their snow,
Thou, 'mid thy sheaves in peaceful seasons stored,
Towerest supreme, victor without a blow,
Smilingly leaning on thy undrawn sword!
poem by Alfred Austin
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I Chide Not At The Seasons
I chide not at the seasons, for if Spring
With backward look refuses to be fair,
My Love still more than April makes me sing,
And shows May blossom in the bleak March air.
Should Summer fail its tryst, or June delay
To wreathe my porch with roses red and pale,
Her breath is sweeter than the new-mown hay,
Her touch more clinging than the woodbine's trail.
Let Autumn like a spendthrift waste the year,
And reap no harvest save the fallen leaves,
My Love still ripeneth, though she grows not sere,
And smiles enthroned upon our piled-up sheaves.
And last, when miser Winter docks the days,
She warms my hearth and keeps my hopes ablaze.
poem by Alfred Austin
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To Alfred Tennyson
Poet! in other lands, when Spring no more
Gleams o'er the grass, nor in the thicket-side
Plays at being lost and laughs to be descried,
And blooms lie wilted on the orchard floor,
Then the sweet birds that from Ægean shore
Across Ausonian breakers thither hied,
Own April's music in their breast hath died,
And croft and copse resound not as before.
But, in this privileged Isle, this brave, this blest,
This deathless England, it seems always Spring.
Though graver wax the days, Song takes not wing.
In Autumn boughs it builds another nest:
Even from the snow we lift our hearts and sing,
And still your voice is heard above the rest.
poem by Alfred Austin
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Dedication To The Edition Of 1876 To H.J.A.
Three graces still attend me, since the day
Your step across my graceless threshold came:
Reverence, and Gratitude, and Love, their name.
Reverence, whose gaze fears from the ground to stray,
And bows its head, and sues to you to lay
Your foot thereon, and keep my base self down:
Next, Gratitude, that, bolder, by degrees
Creeps up the folds of wedlock's rescuing gown,
To make a circling fondness round your knees;
And lastly, Love, which from that low perch sees
Chaste lips, and tender eyes, and tresses brown,
And, darting upward, finds a home with these.
So stand we level in that high embrace,
And I have all your glory on my face.
poem by Alfred Austin
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Give Me Thy Heart
Give me thy heart, I leave thee mine;
But oh! till next our pulses meet,
May my fond spirit round thee shine,
Absorb thy soul and guide thy feet,
And then no more my passion pine,
My bosom idly beat.
I have thy pledge, yet take it back
If ever for a moment thou
In sweet resolve shouldst prove less slack
Than I, at parting, leave thee now.
Love's steady light must mark our track,
And not a flickering vow.
But if, when, past this parting ache,
I gaze upon thy face once more,
Thou still Love's burning thirst wouldst slake,
Still to Love's topmost heights wouldst soar;
Oh! then my life's full tide shall break
On thee, as on its shore.
poem by Alfred Austin
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Content Written Off Ithaca
I could not find the little maid Content,
So out I rushed, and sought her far and wide;
But not where Pleasure each new fancy tried,
Heading the maze of reeling merriment,
Nor where, with restless eyes and bow half bent,
Love in a brake of sweetbrier smiled and sighed,
Nor yet where Fame towered crowned and glorified,
Found I her face, nor wheresoe'er I went.
So homeward back I crawled like wounded bird,
When lo! Content sate spinning at my door:
And when I asked her where she was before-
``Here all the time,'' she said; ``I never stirred;
Too eager in your search, you passed me o'er,
And, though I called, you neither saw nor heard.''
poem by Alfred Austin
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Look up, desponding hearts! See, Morning sallies
Look up, desponding hearts! See, Morning sallies
From out her tents behind the screening hill,
And speeds her glittering lances on the valleys
Where hostile mists, unconscious, slumber still.
Roused from their vain security, they clamber
Up the far slopes and seek the open sky,
Till hill and dale are tinged with gold and amber,
The spoils of victory from those that fly.
Thus when, as though surrendered to the Night,
Men's spirits sleep, shall wakeful Freedom burst
With piercing ray even here, and flood with light
Each skulking nook by loutish custom curst;
But in the glow of victory will spare,
Turning all ill to good, all foul to fair.
poem by Alfred Austin
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The flower, full blown, now bends the stalk, now breaks
The flower, full blown, now bends the stalk, now breaks;
The mellow fruit inclines the bough to earth;
The brow which thought impregnates ofttimes aches;
Death-stricken is the womb in giving birth.
Cracked is the vase by heat which doth illume,
The driest logs the swiftest burn to nought,
Sweet flowers are stifled by their own perfume,
And bees when honey-clogged are easy caught.
Snapped are true chords e'en by the note they give,
The largest wave is broken by its weight,
Choked by its sheer sufficiency the sieve,
And blunted soon the shaft which flieth straight.
And so the largest mind and richest soul
Are always most amenable to dole.
poem by Alfred Austin
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A Wintry Picture
Now where the bare sky spans the landscape bare,
Up long brown fallows creeps the slow brown team,
Scattering the seed-corn that must sleep and dream,
Till by Spring's carillon awakened there.
Ruffling the tangles of his thicket hair,
The stripling yokel steadies now the beam,
Now strides erect with cheeks that glow and gleam,
And whistles shrewdly to the spacious air.
Lured onward to the distance dim and blear,
The road crawls weary of the travelled miles:
The kine stand cowering in unmoving files;
The shrewmouse rustles through the bracken sere;
And, in the sculptured woodland's leafless aisles,
The robin chants the vespers of the year.
poem by Alfred Austin
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The Dregs Of Love
Think you that I will drain the dregs of Love,
I who have quaffed the sweetness on its brink?
Now by the steadfast burning stars above,
Better to faint of thirst than thuswise drink.
What! shall we twain who saw love's glorious fires
Flame toward the sky and flush Heaven's self with light,
Crouch by the embers as the glow expires,
And huddle closer from mere dread of night?
No! cast love's goblet in oblivion's well,
Scatter love's ashes o'er the field of time!
Yet, ere we part, one kiss whereon to dwell
When life sounds senseless as some feeble rhyme.
Lo! as lips touch, anew Love's cresset glows,
And Love's sweet cup refills and overflows.
poem by Alfred Austin
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