All, wherein I have part,
All that was loss or gain, Slips from the clasping heart,
Breaks from the grasping brain. Lo, what is left? I am bare
As a new-born soul, — I am naught:
My deeds are dust in air,
My words are ghosts of thought.
I ride through the night alone,
Detached from the life that seemed,
And the best I have felt or known
Is less than the least I dreamed.

"The Guests of Night" (1871), st. 3 - 4, in The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor (1907), p. 314