Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume III. Sorrow and Consolation. 1904. | | | | IV. Comfort and Cheer | | “Sad is our youth, for it is ever going” | | Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902) |
| | | SAD is our youth, for it is ever going, | |
| Crumbling away beneath our very feet; | |
| Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing | |
| In current unperceived, because so fleet; | |
| Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing,— | 5 |
| But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat; | |
| Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing,— | |
| And still, O, still their dying breath is sweet; | |
| And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us | |
| Of that which made our childhood sweeter still; | 10 |
| And sweet is middle life, for it hath left us | |
| A nearer good to cure an older ill; | |
| And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them, | |
| Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them! | | | | |
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