One Art Transience Quotes

The implication here is that many things are destined to be lost, and even actively will their own loss; the speaker isn’t in control of what comes and goes in her life.

This odd command suggests that loss is a permanent state of unsettledness, and that only by accepting its inevitability can we learn to cope with it.

The expansion of this idea of the "art of losing" into the abstract begins in this line. The poem gains momentum as the poet loses things of greater and greater value, increasing our sense of instability and change.