MCMXIII

    So prodigal was I of youth,
    Forgetting I was young;
    I worshipped dead men for their strength,
    Forgetting I was strong.

    I cherished old, jejune advice;
    I thought I groped for truth;
    Those dead old languages I learned
    When I was prodigal of youth!

    Then in the sunlight stood a boy,
    Outstretching either hand,
    Palm upwards, cup-like, and between
    The fingers trickled sand.

    "Oh, why so grave" he cried to me,
    "Laugh, stern lips, laugh at last!
    Let wisdom come when wisdom may.
    The sand is running fast."

    I followed him into the sun,
    And laughed as he desired,
    And every day upon the grass
    We play till we are tired.

Victoria Mary Sackville-West

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, commonly known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and poet, renowned for her prolific writing and her association with the Bloomsbury Group. She achieved great success with her novels and significant acclaim for her poetry, particularly in the early 20th century. In addition to her literary pursuits, Sackville-West was also known for her creation of the gardens at Sissinghurst Castle, which remain celebrated to this day.

Victoria Mary Sackville-West

Sailing Ships

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Simple Poetry

A Saxon Song

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Simple Poetry

The Dancing Elf*

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Simple Poetry

Full Moon

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

To Knole

October 1, 1913

    I
    I left thee in the crowds and in the light,
    And if I laughed or sorrowed none could tell.
    They could not know our true and deep farewell
    Was spoken in the long preceding night.

    Thy mighty shadow in the garden's dip!
    To others dormant, but to me awake;
    I saw a window in the moonlight shake,
    And traced the angle of the gable's lip,

    And knew thy soul, benign and grave and mild,
    Towards me, morsel of morality,
    And grieving at the parting soon to be,
    A patriarch about to lose a child.

    For many come and soon their tale is told,
    And thou remainest, dimly feeling pain,
    Aware the time draws near to don again
    The sober mourning of the very old.

 ...

Victoria Mary Sackville-West

The Dancing Elf*

    I woke to daylight, and to find
    A wreath of fading vine-leaves, rough entwined,
    Lying, as dropped in hasty flight, upon my floor.

    Dropped from thy head, sweet Spirit of the night,
    Who cam'st, with footstep light,
    Blown in by the soft breeze, as thistledown,
    In through my open door.
    Whence? From the woodland, from the fields of corn,
    From flirting airily with the bright moon,
    Playing throughout the hours that go too soon,
    Ready to fly at the approach of morn,
    Thou cam'st,
    Bent on the curious quest
    To see what mortal guest
    Dwelt in the one-roomed cottage built to face the dawn.

    Thou didst pause
    Shy, timid, on the threshold, though there laughed
    The mischief in thy roguish ey...

Victoria Mary Sackville-West

Hope Deferred

    Summer is come again. The sun is bright,
    And the soft wind is breathing. Airy joy
    Is sparkling in thine eyes, and in their light
    My soul is shining. Come; our day's employ
    Shall be to revel in unlikely things,
    In gayest hopes, fondest imaginings,
    And make-believes of bliss. Come, we will talk
    Of waning moons, low winds, and a dim sea;
    Till this fair summer, deepening as we walk,
    Has grown a paradise for you and me.

    But ah, those leaves!--it was not summer's mouth
    Breathed such a gold upon them. And look there--
    That beech how red! See, through its boughs, half-bare,
    How low the sun lies in the mid-day south!--
    The sweetness is but one pined memory flown
    Back from our summer, wandering alone!

George MacDonald

The Poet To His Childhood

In my thought I see you stand with a path on either hand,
--Hills that look into the sun, and there a river'd meadow-land.
And your lost voice with the things that it decreed across me thrills,
    When you thought, and chose the hills.

'If it prove a life of pain, greater have I judged the gain.
With a singing soul for music's sake, I climb and meet the rain,
And I choose, whilst I am calm, my thought and labouring to be
    Unconsoled by sympathy.'

But how dared you use me so?    For you bring my ripe years low
To your child's whim and a destiny your child-soul could not know.
And that small voice legislating I revolt against, with tears.
    But you mark not, through the years.

'To the mountain leads my way.    If the plains are green to-day,
These my ba...

Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell

Elegiacs

Wearily stretches the sand to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland;
Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone.
Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, ??de? ya???,
Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife;
No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether,
But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold.
Fruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o'er me -
What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame?
Blossoms would fret me with beauty; my heart has no time to bepraise them;
Gray rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within.
Sing not, thou sky-lark above! even angels pass hushed by the weeper.
Scream on, ye sea-fowl! my heart echoes your desolate cry.
Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind...

Charles Kingsley

The Deserted Garden

I mind me in the days departed,
How often underneath the sun
With childish bounds I used to run
To a garden long deserted.

The beds and walks were vanished quite;
And wheresoe'er had struck the spade,
The greenest grasses Nature laid
To sanctify her right.

I called the place my wilderness,
For no one entered there but I;
The sheep looked in, the grass to espy,
And passed it ne'ertheless.

The trees were interwoven wild,
And spread their boughs enough about
To keep both sheep and shepherd out,
But not a happy child.

Adventurous joy it was for me!
I crept beneath the boughs, and found
A circle smooth of mossy ground
Beneath a poplar tree.

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in,
Bedropt with roses waxen-white

Elizabeth Barrett Browning