For just a few brief hours
Her he forgot;
The waves of pain swam round her heart,
The tears sprang quick and hot;
And he, amazed, beheld them fall,
Love learns so slowly, after all!
Then—ah, the pity! —straight
She spake the bitter word,
That hurt as she had little dreamed,
When silently he heard;
Fate holds us ever in its thrall,
And love learns slowly, after all.
“Love Learns Slowly” as it appears in Higginson’s The Voice of April-Land and Other Poems (1903).