I dreamt I was in love again
With the One Before the Last, 
And smiled to greet the pleasant pain 
Of that innocent young past. 
But I jumped to feel how sharp had been
The pain when it did live, 
How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten 
Were Hell in Nineteen-five. 
The boy’s woe was as keen and clear, 
The boy’s love just as true,
And the One Before the Last, my dear, 
Hurt quite as much as you. 

Sickly I pondered how the lover 
Wrongs the unanswering tomb, 
And sentimentalizes over
What earned a better doom. 
Gently he tombs the poor dim last time, 
Strews pinkish dust above, 
And sighs, ‘The dear dead boyish pastime! 
But THIS — ah, God! — is Love!’
— Better oblivion hide dead true loves, 
Better the night enfold, 
Than men, to eke the praise of new loves, 
Should lie about the old! 

Oh! bitter thoughts I had in plenty.
But here’s the worst of it — 
I shall forget, in Nineteen-twenty, 
YOU ever hurt a bit!