Selected by Dr Oliver Tearle

In a previous postal service, we've gathered together x of the very best poems virtually old age, but what well-nigh youth and youthfulness? Here'south our pick of ten of the greatest poems in the English linguistic communication that celebrate or reflect upon youth and beingness immature.

1. John Milton, 'How Soon Hath Fourth dimension'.

How before long hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days wing on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'thursday …

Milton (1608-74) was, by all accounts, a cute immature man; and although at age 23 he felt his commencement affluent of youth was already in the past, he connected to look angelically youthful. The fact that he wrote this sonnet at such a immature age is a testament to his precocity as a poet.

2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Youth and Age'.

Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poetry,
When I was young!

'You're only as one-time as you feel' might exist a rough paraphrase of the master sentiment driving this poem, by one of English literature'south leading Romantic poets.

Considering of this, it's an upbeat poem nigh growing onetime but too a swell celebration of enduring and long-lasting youth. If we tin can but remain young in listen, and then we are young, no affair that our bodies may be growing older. No: equally Coleridge asserts, 'Youth and I are firm-mates all the same.'

3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 'My Lost Youth'.

Often I call up of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and downwardly
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a poesy of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory nevertheless:
'A boy's will is the wind'south will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

The title of this verse form by the author of the Song of Hiawatha says it all: the poet reflects nostalgically on his lost youth in America: 'Frequently I think of the beautiful boondocks / That is seated by the sea; / Frequently in idea go upward and down / The pleasant streets of that love old town, / And my youth comes back to me.'

four. Matthew Arnold, 'Youth and At-home'.

'Tis decease! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
In that location's zippo tin can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid forehead.
Only is a at-home like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?

Here we notice the Victorian poet reflecting on decease, simply in doing then, his thoughts accept him back to his youth. Why do young people find themselves longing for the grave?

5. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 'The Lost Garden'.

Tin can we ever repossess our lost youth? That is a perennial theme among poets in particular. Here, Wilcox (1850-1919) uses the prototype of the garden to ruminate upon this question:

I would become back, just the ways are winding,
If ways there are to that land, in sooth;
For what man succeeds in ever finding
A path to the garden of his lost youth?

vi. A. E. Housman, 'Please Information technology Is in Youth and May'.

Delight information technology is in youth and May
To see the morning time arise,
And more than delight to look all solar day
A lover in the optics.
Oh maiden, let your distaff be,
And pace the flowery meads with me,
And I volition tell you lies …

Unusually for a poem by A. E. Housman (1859-1936), the Laureate of unrequited love, this poem begins with hope: morning time, springtime, and youth. But every bit the curt poem develops, we realise that all is not well in this Edenic globe of youth the poet is painting…

seven. Westward. B. Yeats, 'Youth and Age'.

This poem is a single quatrain, and so can be reproduced here in full:

Much did I rage when young,
Being by the earth oppressed,
But now with flattering natural language
Information technology speeds the parting guest.

The young poet was aroused and possessed past a desire to tackle the injustices of the globe. Merely world-weariness about being unable to change the world sets in once the poet'due south youth has passed…

8. William Carlos Williams, 'Youth and Beauty'.

A domestic verse form, this, brought to us by the American modernist poet who left his wife a note about having eaten all the plums in the icebox and who extolled the importance of a red wheelbarrow. Here, youth and beauty are examined through the image of a dishmop…

9. D. H. Lawrence, 'Virgin Youth'.

Now and once again
All my body springs alive,
And the life that is polarised in my eyes,
That quivers between my eyes and mouth,
Flies similar a wild thing beyond my trunk,
Leaving my eyes one-half-empty, and insatiable …

Lawrence (1885-1930) liked to face taboos in his writing, particularly sexual taboos. In this early verse form, he touches upon the topic of … self-pleasure, using suggestive linguistic communication (the phrase 'willy nilly' is a loaded one here) to conjure upward the experience of what the Victorians called 'self-pollution'. A somewhat different poetic accept on youth from the others on this list!

x. Wilfred Owen, 'Anthem for Doomed Youth'.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the easily of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their curtain;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a cartoon-downwards of blinds …

Of course, in the early twentieth century a whole generation of young men found their lives either contradistinct forever, or, in many cases, tragically cutting short, considering of the First World War (1914-eighteen). This sonnet by the finest war poet England has ever produced is full of full-bodied anger and, true to Owen'due south intentions, the compassion of war.

Detect more classic verse with these birthday poems, short poems about death, and these classic war poems. We as well recommend The Oxford Book of English language Verse  – perhaps the best poesy anthology on the market (nosotros offer our pick of the all-time poesy anthologies hither).

The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the writer of, among others,The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers' Journey Through Curiosities of History  andThe Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.