Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
IV. Comfort and Cheer“Sad is our youth, for it is ever going”
Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902)S
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,—
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;
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!