Quote

Imagination in poetry, as distinguished from mere fancy is the transfiguring of the real or actual to the ideal.

Alfred Austin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alfred Austin
Age: 78 †
Born: 1835
Born: May 30
Died: 1913
Died: June 2
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Real
Distinguished
Actual
Ideal
Fancy
Ideals
Mere
Poetry
Imagination

More quotes by Alfred Austin

Image
Tis true among fields and woods I sing, Aloof from cities--that my poor strains Were born, like the simple flowers you bring, In English meadows and English lanes.
Alfred Austin
Image
Doth Nature draw me, 'tis because, Unto my seeming, there doth lurk A lawlessness about her laws, More mood than purpose in her work.
Alfred Austin
Image
Through the dripping weeks that follow One another slow, and soak Summer's extinguished fire and autumn's drifting smoke.
Alfred Austin
Image
Life seems like a haunted wood, where we tremble and crouch and cry.
Alfred Austin
Image
Falling stars are high examples sent To warn, not lure. Gross fancy says they are Substantial meteors but that is not so. They are the merest phantasies of Night, When she's asleep, and, dimly visited By past effects, she dreams of Lucifer Hurled out of Heaven.
Alfred Austin
Image
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
Image
Pale January lay In its cradle day by day Dead or living, hard to say.
Alfred Austin
Image
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
Image
We are all alike, and we love to keep passion aglow at our feet, Like one that sitteth in shade and complacently smiles at the heat.
Alfred Austin
Image
Faded smiles oft linger in the face, While grief's first flakes fall silent on the heart!
Alfred Austin
Image
Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think.
Alfred Austin
Image
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
Image
Is life worth living? Yes, so long As Spring revives the year, And hails us with the cuckoo's song, To show that she is here.
Alfred Austin
Image
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
Image
No verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as poetry whatever other qualities it may possess.
Alfred Austin
Image
There is no gardening without humility
Alfred Austin
Image
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
Image
From sunny woof and cloudy weft Fell rain in sheets so, to myself I hummed these hazard rhymes, and left The learned volume on the shelf.
Alfred Austin
Image
Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.
Alfred Austin
Image
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