Sonnet to Youth (No 1076)
Youth, beautiful and daring, and divine,
Loved of the Gods, when yet the happy earth
Was joyful in its mourning and new birth;
When yet the very odours of the brine
Love’s cradle, filled with sweetness all the shrine
Of Venus, ere these starveling times of dearth,
Of priest-praised abstinence, made void of mirth,
Had given us water where we asked for wine.

Youth, standing sweet, triumphant by the sea
All freshness of the day and all the light
Of morn on thy white limbs, firm, bared and bright
For conflict, and assured of victory,
Youth, make one conquest more; and take again
Thy rightful crown, in lovers’ hearts to reign!

Words credited to the artist Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929).
From The Artist (1889)

This text appears attached to the entry for Perseus and Andromeda (R121) in Tuke’s Registers. According to Charles Kains Jackson, who later informed the compiler S.E. Cottam, a sonnet published in the 1889 issue of The Artist was written by Henry Scott Tuke. The poem in question is likely the same work; however, the evidence is insufficient to confirm Tuke’s authorship with certainty.