The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems 1918 is a collection of poems by English author Aldous Huxley Although Huxley is known foremost as a novelist his poetry exhibits a mastery of language and an uncommon sense of the music inherent to words The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems is his third poetry collection quotThe Defeat of Youthquot is a moving sonnet sequence on the passage of innocence to experience on familiar transformation of love into lust Capturing the experience of youthful attraction Huxley imagines the moment in which the beloved quotleans and there is laughter in the face She turns toward him and it seems a door Suddenly opened on some desolate place With a burst of light and musicquot As the young man awakens to the life of another his vision turns tragically pure molding an image of quotimmanence divinequot a face quotin a flash of laughterquot and a quotyoung body with an inward flamequot As the poem unfolds however he feels only shame to have touched quotthings deadly to be desiredquot Throughout this collection Huxley explores the poets tendency to sing and to praise the worlds fleeting beauty while quotother young men have been battling with the days And...
