Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

Aubrey Thomas De Vere b. 1814

Human Life

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 unperceiv’d because so fleet;

Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing,

But tares, self-sown, have overtopp’d 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 our life’s decline, 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.