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

Categorized in : Moving Flower Warrior

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.

Alfred Austin

garden heart hands

Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think.

Alfred Austin

wisdom wise thinking

We come from the earth, we return to the earth,

Alfred Austin

return garden earth

Alfred Austin said, "Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are."

Alfred Austin

horse journey food

Is life worth living?

Alfred Austin

men life thinking

Tears are summer showers to the soul.

Alfred Austin

tears soul summer

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul. Share the botanical bliss of gardeners through the ages, who have cultivated philosophies to apply to their own - and our own - lives: Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.

Alfred Austin

garden heart philosophy

There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.

Alfred Austin

educational garden humility

Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.

Alfred Austin

society garden mistake

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

scent notes song

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.

Alfred Austin

age mind past

He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still.

Alfred Austin

stills feels life

A garden that one makes oneself becomes associated with one’s personal history and that of one’s friends, interwoven with one’s tastes, preferences and character and constitutes a sort of unwritten autobiography.

Alfred Austin

garden taste character

Life seems like a haunted wood, where we tremble and crouch and cry.

Alfred Austin

cry woods life

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

poetry air tree

Where has thou been all the dumb winter days When neither sunlight was nor smile of flowers, Neither life, nor love, nor frolic, Only expanse melancholic, With never a note of thy exhilarating lays?

Alfred Austin

dumb flower winter

So, timely you came, and well you chose, You came when most needed, my winter rose. From the snow I pluck you, and fondly press Your leaves 'twixt the leaves of my leaflessness.

Alfred Austin

rose winter snow

Have you never, when waves were breaking, watched children at sport on the beach, With their little feet tempting the foam-fringe, till with stronger and further reach Than they dreamed of, a billow comes bursting, how they turn and scamper and screech!

Alfred Austin

inspirational sports beach

My virgin sense of sound was steeped In the music of young streams; And roses through the casement peeped, And scented all my dreams.

Alfred Austin

sound dream rose

If Nature built by rule and square, Than man what wiser would she be? What wins us is her careless care, And sweet unpunctuality.

Alfred Austin

nature sweet men