Human Life

By Aubrey Thomas De Vere (b. 1814)

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.