“--Even losing you (a joking voice, a gesture/ I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident/ the art of losing's not too hard to master/ though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.”

“The art of losing isn't hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof 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 meantto travel. None of these will bring disaster.I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, ornext-to-last, of three loved houses went.The art of losing isn't hard to master.I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gestureI love) I shan't have lied. It's evidentthe art of losing's not too hard to masterthough it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.”

“The art of losing isn't hard to master.”

“If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings. ”

“all my life i have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper just running down the edges of different countries and continents, looking for something.”

“Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic, at last have some small works of art, some short poems, short pieces of music [...], some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?”

“Exchanging HatsUnfunny uncles who insistin trying on a lady's hat,--oh, even if the joke falls flat,we share your slight transvestite twistin spite of our embarrassment.Costume and custom are complex.The headgear of the other sexinspires us to experiment.Anandrous aunts, who, at the beachwith paper plates upon your laps,keep putting on the yachtsmen's capswith exhibitionistic screech,the visors hanging o'er the earso that the golden anchors drag,--the tides of fashion never lag.Such caps may not be worn next year.Or you who don the paper plateitself, and put some grapes upon it,or sport the Indian's feather bonnet,--perversities may aggravatethe natural madness of the hatter.And if the opera hats collapseand crowns grow draughty, then, perhaps,he thinks what might a miter matter?Unfunny uncle, you who wore ahat too big, or one too many,tell us, can't you, are there anystars inside your black fedora?Aunt exemplary and slim,with avernal eyes, we wonderwhat slow changes they see undertheir vast, shady, turned-down brim.”