Alfred Austin Poems

I
What is it haunts the summer air?
A sense of something lately passed away;
Something pleasant, something fair,
...

One day as on an ass I rode,
By many a twisting gully,
To where once stood the famed abode
Of philosophic Tully,
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Hail! throstle, by thy ringing voice descried,
Not by the wanderings of the tuneless wing!
Now once again where forkëd boughs divide,
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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,
...

The gloss is fading from your hair,
The glamour from your brow;
The light your eyes were wont to wear
Attracts no gazer now.
...

How can I tell thee when I love thee best?
In rapture or repose? how shall I say?
I only know I love thee every way,
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Though all the world should stand aside,
And leave you to your sorrow,
And you from none, or near, or wide,
A smile or tear could borrow;
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O the sunny days before us, before us, before us,
When all was bright
From holt to height,
And the heavens were shining o'er us;
...

When in the long-drawn avenues of Thought
I halt, and look before me and behind,
And seek what erst I all too little sought,
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When Athens challenged Phryne to confess
Eleusis' self sufficed not to appal
Her impious tread, and, throned within their Hall,
...