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.
Alfred Austin (1835 – 1913) was an English journalist and a poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, after an interval following the death of Tennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or simply refused the honor. It was claimed that he was being rewarded for his support for the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury in the General Election of 1895.