Aubrey Thomas De Vere - Sad is our youth, for it is ever going

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,— 

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!