Poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The House of Life. Sonnet 24. Pride of Youth

Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
The dead, but little in his heart can find,
Since without need of thought to his clear mind
Their turn it is to die and his to live:
Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind,
Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
Where night-wrack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.

There is a change in every hour's recall
And the last cowslip in the fields we see
On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,
Even as the beads of a told rosary! 

1. The Staff and Scrip
2. The House of Life. Sonnet 51. Willowwood - 3
3. The House of Life. Sonnet 38. The Morrow's Message
4. The House of Life. Sonnet 40. Severed Selves
5. The House of Life. Sonnet 44. Cloud and Wind

Print

1287 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version