| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| Human Life |
| | | Aubrey Thomas De Vere (b. 1814) |
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| 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, | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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. | |
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