Pride of Youth (British Library fair copy)Dante Gabriel Rossetti1By permission of The British LibraryPride of YouthDante Gabriel Rossetti1880holograph fair copy1 small leafBritish Library, Ashley CollectionAshley 3858One side only of a quarto leaf of white paper.188022.5 x 17.8 cm
Commentary
Introduction
This fair copy may well have been printer's copy for the poem's publication
in the 1881
Ballads and Sonnets
.
Textual History: Composition
Textual History: Revision
Production History
Reception History
Iconographic
Printing History
Pictorial
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Literary
Translation
Autobiographical
Bibliographic
Pride of Youth.--------Even as a child, of sorrow that we giveThe dead, but little in his heart can find,Since without need of thought in his clear mindTheir turn it is to die and his to live:—Even so the winged New Love smiles to receiveAlong his eddying plumes the auroral wind,Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behindWhere night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.There is a change in every hour's recall,And the last cowslip in the fields we seeOn the same day with the first corn-poppy.Alas for hourly change! Alas for allThe loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,Even as the beads of a told rosary!Dante G. Rossetti