Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: Pride of Youth (British Library fair copy)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1880
Type of Manuscript: holograph fair copy

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

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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 in 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-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.
  • There is a change in every hour's recall,
  • 10And 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!
Dante G. Rossetti
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 10-1871.blms2.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of The British Library