Littell's Living Age/Volume 151/Issue 1948/Pride of Youth

by Dante G. Rossetti

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!