English poet (1835-1913)
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
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The Bridling of Pegasus
Sycophants, therefore, can dance attendance on the Many as easily and as mischievously as on the One.
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
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
Most patriotic verse, however spirited, is verse only, nothing or little more.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
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
Sensible men entertain a careful distrust of each, and devise and maintain every possible barrier against the selfish vagaries of both alike.
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
The tendency of the times is to encourage writers, whether in prose or verse, to deal with this particular theme and to deal with it too frequently and too pertinaciously. Moreover, there is always a danger that a subject, in itself so delicate, should not be quite delicately handled, and indeed that it should be treated with indelicacy and grossness. That, too, unfortunately, has happened in verse; and when that happens, then I think the Heavenly Muse veils her face and weeps. It must have been through some dread of poetry thus dishonoring itself that Plato in his ideal Republic proposed that poets should be crowned with laurel, and then banished from the city.
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
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
Among the causes that have contributed to divert popular affection and popular sympathy from poetical literature, there are three that deserve to be specially indicated. The first of these is the multiplication of prose romances, which, though so much lower in literary value and in artistic character than poetry, and so much less elevating in their tendency, are better fitted to stimulate the vulgar imagination, and minister more freely to the common craving for excitement. The second cause is the reaction that has settled upon mankind from the fervid hopes inspired by the propagation of those theories and the propounding of those promises which the historian associates with the French Revolution. All saner minds have long since discovered that happiness is to be procured neither for the individual nor for the community by mere political changes; and the discovery has been distinctly hostile to literary enthusiasm. Finally, many poets, and nearly all the critics of poetry, in our time, seem determined to alienate ordinary human beings from contact with the Muse. The world is easily persuaded that it is an ignoramus; and the vast majority of people, after being told, year after year, that what they do not understand is poetry, and what they do not care one straw about is the proper theme and the highest expression of song, end by concluding that poetry has become a mystery beyond their intelligence, a sort of freemasonry from whose symbols they are jealously excluded. Unable to appreciate what the critics tell them are the noblest productions of genius, they modestly infer that between genius and themselves there is no method of communication; and incapable of reading with pleasure the poetry they are assured ought to fill them with rapture, they desist from reading poetry altogether. They have not the self-confidence to choose their own poets and select their own poetry; and indeed in these days, the only chance any writer has of being read is that he should first be greatly talked about. Thus, what between the poets who are talked about by so-called experts, and thus made notorious, but whom ordinary folks find unreadable, and the poets, if there be any such, whom ordinary folks would read with pleasure if they knew of their existence, but of whom they have scarcely heard, poetry has become "caviare to the general," who content themselves with the coarser flavour of the novel, and the more easily digested pabulum of the newspaper.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
I daresay larks do not find much music in the thunder. But they have the sense to be silent when they hear the roll of that untrembling diapason that makes all things tremble.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
If this be poetry, then poetry is very easily written, and what has hitherto been supposed to be the highest, the most difficult, and the rarest, of the arts, presents no more difficulty to the person who knows how to write at all than the simplest, baldest, and most unartistic prose.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
In all ages the disposition of the more prosaic minds—by which term I do not mean minds belonging to persons devoid of feeling, or even of sentiment, but persons destitute of the poetic sense, or of what Poetry essentially is—has been to incline, in works of fiction whether in prose or verse, to Realism pure and simple; and the present Age, thanks to the invention of photography and the dissemination of novels that seek to describe persons and things such as they are or are supposed to be, has a peculiar and exceptional leaning in that direction. The direction is a dangerous one, for the last stage of Realism pure and simple in prose fiction is the exhibition of demoralized man and degraded woman. In poetry, thank Heaven, that operation is impossible. No doubt, it is possible in verse just as it is possible in prose, and perhaps even more so; and there are persons who will tell you that it is Poetry. But it is not, and never can be made such. Poetry is either the idealized Real, the realistic Ideal, or the Ideal pure and simple.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
In Shakespeare, as we might have expected, the masculine note and the feminine note are heard in perfect harmony.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Is the conclusion then that a pessimistic criticism of life necessarily makes a poet greater than another poet who criticizes it from an optimistic point of view? Not in the least. The consideration—we do not say to the positive philosopher, to the historian, to the moralist, but—to the disinterested lover of poetry, is simply irrelevant.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
It will scarcely be doubted, therefore, that there does exist a real and a very grave danger lest Poetry should, in these perplexing and despondent days, not only be closely associated with Pessimism, but should become for the most part its voice and echo.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
No first-rate poet ever went mad, or ever committed suicide, though one or two, no doubt, have happened to die comparatively young.
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