I'm healthier and slightly more intelligent this morning, though I'm not sure why, having spent what felt like most of the night in the idiot stage of worry-wort haplessness: "Does the dog have enough water in her bowl? Am I thirsty? Is it raining? Did I pass that high school math test?"  But even in the throes of a head cold I managed to finish yesterday's editorial assignment, so I earned the reward of spending all of today writing about Dickinson's "He put the Belt around my life," the featured poem in chapter 2 of The Conversation: Learning to Be a Poet. For copyright reasons I can't reprint that poem here, but I can share one of the five anthologized poems that will end this chapter. The question under discussion will be "What's the most important line?" What's your answer as regards the Byron lyric?

So We’ll Go No More a Roving 

            George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) 

So we’ll go no more a roving
            So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
            And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears the sheath,
            And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
            and Love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
            And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
            By the light of the moon.