I fell asleep and dreamed that I
Was flung, like Vulcan, from the sky;
Like him was lamed-another part:
His leg was crippled and my heart.
I woke in time to see my love
Conceal a letter in her glove

I

He was not learned in any art;
But Nature led him by the hand;
And spoke her language to his heart
So he could hear and understand:
He loved her simply as a child;
And in his love forgot the heat
Of conflict, and sat reconciled
In patience of defeat.

II

Before me now I see him rise-
A face, that seventy years had snowed
With winter, where the kind blue eyes
Like hospitable fires glowed:
A small gray man whose heart was large,
And big with knowledge learned of need;
A heart, the hard world made its targe,

With her 't is well now. She died young,
With all her hope and faith unmarred,
Nor lived to see the pearls, Love strung,
Without regard,
Cast, lost among
The disillusions that make life so hard.
Time on her body now can lay
No soiling hand and spoil what's fair:
He shall not turn the gold hair gray,
Nor bring crabbed Care,
Day after day,
To line the white brow with the heart's despair.
Far better thus. Yea, even so,
To die before faith turns to dust,
Before the heart has learned to know,
As learn it must,
Of love the woe,

One lovely name adorns my song,
And, dwelling in the heart,
Forever falters at the tongue,
And trembles to depart.

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

ONE star only for Love's heaven;
One rose only for Love's breast;
One love only to be given.

Star that gathers all stars' glory
Rose all sweetness of the rest;
Love that is all life's glad story.

ONCE we played at love together--
Played it smartly, if you please;
Lightly, as a windblown feather,
Did we stake a heart apiece.

Oh, it was delicious fooling!
In the hottest of the game,
Without thought of future cooling,
All too quickly burned Life's flame.

In this give-and-take of glances,
Kisses sweet as honey dews,
When we played with equal chances,
Did you win, or did I lose?

Was your heart then hurt to bleeding,
In the ardour of the throw?
Was it then I lost, unheeding,

Once on a golden day,
In the golden month of May,
I gave my heart away--
Little birds were singing.

I culled my heart in truth,
Wet with the dews of youth,
For love to take, forsooth--
Little flowers were springing.

Love sweetly laughed at this,
And between kiss and kiss
Fled with my heart in his:
Winds warmly blowing.

And with his sun and shower
Love kept my heart in flower,
As in the greenest bower
Rose richly glowing.

Till, worn at evensong,
Love dropped my heart among

Once I thought my love was worth the name
If tears came.
When the wound is mortal, now I know,
Few tears flow.

ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for
future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and
traditions;
Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met
there, who detain'd me for love of me;
Day by day and night by night we were together,--All else has long
been forgotten by me;
I remember, I say, only that woman who passionately clung to me;
Again we wander--we love--we separate again;
Again she holds me by the hand--I must not go!