Lost
The Speaker, September 28, 1901



So you have gained the golden crowns, so you have piled together,
The laurels and the jewels, the pearls out of the blue,
But I will beat the bounding drum and I will fly the feather
For all the glory I have lost, the good I never knew.

I saw the light of morning pale on princely human faces,
In tales irrevocably gone in final night enfurled,
I saw the tail of flying fights, a glimpse of burning blisses.
And laughed to think what I had lost- the wealth of all the world.

Yea, ruined in a royal game, I was before my cradle,
Was ever gambler hurling gold who lost such things as I?
The purple moth that died an hour ere I was born of woman,
The great green sunset God shall make three days after I die.

When all the lights are lost and done, when all the skies are broken
Above the ruin of stars, my soul shall sit in state
With a brain made rich, with the irrevocable sunsets,
And a closed heart happy in the fullness of fate.

So you have gained the golden crowns and grasped the golden weather,
The kingdoms and the hemispheres that all men buy and sell,
But I will lash the leaping drum and swing the flaring feather,
For the light of seven heavens that are lost to me like hell.