The Five Books of Youth

"The Five Books of Youth" by Robert Hillyer is a poetry collection from the early 1900s that captures youthful feelings through poems about love, nature, and death. Hillyer writes with a lot of feeling, reflecting the beauty but also the short time of being young. The collection has five parts, each showing how Hillyer uses bright pictures with deep feelings. The first part, "A Miscellany," includes different poems that make you feel nostalgic. It shows moments of love and thinking, using symbols. The other parts, "Days and Seasons," "Eros," "The Garden of Epicurus," and "Sonnets," continue to look at time passing, and how desire and death work together. Nature is used as the backdrop to connect humans to the world around them. The poems express a longing for what has passed and a celebration of the lively experiences of youth, making the collection touching and classic.