When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
    Little room do I find for pride.

    I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
    Has fallen short or been turned aside.

    But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
    The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

Profit?--Loss?
Who shall declare this good--that ill?--
When good and ill so intertwine
But to fulfil the vast design
Of an Omniscient Will?--
When seeming gain but turns to loss,--
When earthly treasure proves but dross,--
And what seemed loss but turns again
To high, eternal gain?

Wisest the man who does his best,
And leaves the rest
To Him who counts not deeds alone,
But sees the root, the flower, the fruit,
And calls them one.

“Our loss was light,” the paper said,
“Compared with damage to the Hun”:
She was a widow, and she read
One name upon the list of dead
Her son, her only son.

Great men by small means oft are overthrown;
He's lord of thy life, who contemns his own.

To lose one's faith surpasses
The loss of an estate,
Because estates can be
Replenished, -- faith cannot.

Inherited with life,
Belief but once can be;
Annihilate a single clause,
And Being's beggary.

Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.

All has been plunder'd from me but my wit:
Fortune herself can lay no claim to it.

A thousand times I would have hoped,
    A thousand times protested;
But still, as through the night I groped,
    My torch from me was wrested,
        and wrested.

How often with a succoring cup
    Unto the hurt I hasted!
The wounded died ere I came up;
    My cup was still untasted, -
        Untasted.

Of darkness, wounds, and harsh disdain
    Endured, I ne'er repented.
'T is not of these I would complain:
    With these I were contented, -
        Contented.

Here lies the misery, to feel
    No work of love completed;
In prayerless passion still to kneel,
    And mourn, and cry: "Defeated
        Defeated!"

Think not of any one of them as wasted,
Or to the void like broken tools outcasted,--
Unnoticed, unregretted, and unknown.
Not so is His care shown.

Know this!--
In God's economy there is no waste,
As in His Work no slackening, no haste;
But noiselessly, without a sign,
The measure of His vast design
Is all fulfilled, exact as He hath willed.

And His good instruments He tends with care,
Lest aught their future usefulness impair,--
As Master-craftsman his choice tools doth tend,
Respecting each one as a trusty friend,
Cleans them, and polishes, and puts away,
For his good usage at some future day;--
So He unto Himself has taken these,
Not to their loss but to their vast increase.
To us,--the loss, the emptiness, the pain;
But unto the...

I sing what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again,
My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;
Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,
They always beat on the same small stone.

Loss molds our lives in many ways,
And fills our souls with guesses;
Upon our hearts sad hands it lays
Like some grave priest that blesses.

Far better than the love we win,
That earthly passions leaven,
Is love we lose, that knows no sin,
That points the path to Heaven.

Love, whose soft shadow brightens Earth,
Through whom our dreams are nearest;
And loss, through whom we see the worth
Of all that we held dearest.

Not joy it is, but misery
That chastens us, and sorrow;
Perhaps to make us all that we
Expect beyond To-morrow.

Within that life where time and fate
Are not; that knows no seeming:
That world to which death keeps the gate
Where love and loss sit dreaming.