POETRY BY SARA TEASDALE
To Eleonora Duse
(from Sonnets to Duse & Other Poems, 1907)
Oh beauty that is filled so full of tears,
Where every passing anguish left its trace,
I pray you grant to me this depth of grace:
That I may see before it disappears,
Blown through the gateway of our hopes and fears
To death's insatiable last embrace,
The glory and the sadness of your face,
Its longing unappeased through all the years.
No bitterness beneath your sorrow clings;
Within the wild dark falling of your hair
There lies a strength that ever soars and sings;
Your mouth's mute weariness is not despair.
Perhaps among us craven earth-born things
God loves its silence better than a prayer.
* * *
The Gift
(from Sonnets to Duse & Other Poems, 1907)
What can I give you, my lord, my lover,
You who have given the world to me,
Showed me the light and the joy that cover
The wild sweet earth and the restless sea?
All that I have are gifts of your giving-
If I gave them again, you would find them old,
And your soul would weary of always living
Before the mirror my life would hold.
What shall I give you, my lord, my lover?
The gift that breaks the heart in me:
I bid you awake at dawn and discover
I hve gone my way and left you free.
* * *
Faults
(from Sonnets to Duse & Other Poems, 1907)
They came to tell your faults to me,
They named them over one by one;
I laughed aloud when they were done,
I knew them all so well before,-
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see
Your faults had made me love you more.
* * *
Four Winds
(from Helen of Troy & Other Poems, 1911)
"Four winds blowing through the sky,
You have seen poor maidens die,
Tell me then what I shall do
That my lover may be true."
Sail the wind from out the south,
"Lay no kiss upon his mouth,"
And the wind from out the west,
"Wound the heart within his breast,"
And the wind from out the east,
"Send him empty from the feast,"
And the wind from out the north,
"In the tempest thrust him forth,
When thou art more cruel than he,
Then will Love be kind to thee."
* * *
"I Would Live In Your Love
(from Helen of Troy & Other Poems, 1911)
I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,
Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes;
I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,
I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as it leads.
* * *
May
(from Helen of Troy & Other Poems, 1911)
The wind is tossing the lilacs,
The new leaves laugh in the sun,
And the petals fall on the orchard wall,
But for me the spring is done.
Beneath the apple blossoms
I go a wintry way,
For love that smiled in April
Is false to me in May.
* * *
A Winter Night
(from Helen of Troy & Other Poems, 1911)
My window-pane is starred with frost,
The world is bitter cold to-night,
The moon is cruel, and the wind
Is like a two-edged sword to smite.
God pity all the homeless ones,
The beggars pacing to and fro,
God pity all the poor to-night
Who walk the lamp-lit streets of snow.
My room is like a bit of June,
Warm and close-curtained fold on fold,
But somewhere, like a homeless child,
My heart is crying in the cold.
* * *
To Erinna
(from Helen of Troy & Other Poems, 1911)
Was Time not harsh to you, or was he kind,
O pale Erinna of the perfect lyre,
That he has left no word of singing fire
Whereby you walked the dreaming Lesbian wind,
And kindled night along the darkened shore?
O girl whose lips Erato stooped to kiss,
Do you go sorrowing because of this
In fields where poets sing forevermore?
Or are you glad, and is it best to be
A silent music men have never heard,
A dream in all our hearts that we may say:
"Her voice had all the rapture of the sea,
And all the clear cool quiver of a bird
Deep in a forest at the break of day"?
* * *
The Flight
(from Rivers to the Sea, 1915)
Look back with longing eyes and know that I will follow,
Lift me up in your love as a light wind lifts a swallow,
Let our flight be far in sun or blowing rain -
But what if I heard my first love calling me again?
Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam,
Take me far away to the hills that hid your home;
Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door -
But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?
* * *
The Look
(from Rivers to the Sea, 1915)
Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.
Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.
* * *
I Shall Not Care
(from Rivers to the Sea, 1915)
When I am dead and over my bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
* * *
Pity
(from Rivers to the Sea, 1915)
They never saw my lover's face,
They only know our love was brief,
Wearing awhile a windy grace
And passing like an autumn leaf.
They wonder why I do not weep,
They think it strange that I can sing,
They say, "Her love was scarcely deep
Since it has left so slight a sting."
They never saw my love, nor knew
That in my heart's most secret place
I pity them as angels do
Men who have never seen God's face.
* * *
Leaves
(from Rivers to the Sea, 1915)
One by one, like leaves from a tree,
All my faiths have forsaken me;
But the stars above my head
Burn in white and delicate red,
And beneath my feet the earth
Brings the sturdy grass to birth.
I who was content to be
But a silken-singing tree,
But a rustle of delight
In the wistful heart of night-
I have lost the leaves that knew
Touch of rain and weight of dew.
Blinded by a leafy crown
I looked neither up nor down-
But the little leaves that die
Have left me room to see the sky;
Now for the first time I know
Stars above and earth below.
* * *
Gifts
(from Rivers to the Sea, 1915)
I gave my first love laughter,
I gave my second tears,
I gave my third love silence
Through all the years.
My first love gave me singing,
My second eyes to see,
But oh, it was my third love
Who gave my soul to me.
* * *
Barter
(from Love Songs, 1917)
Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.
Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
* * *
Spirit's House
(from Love Songs, 1917)
From naked stones of agony
I will build a house for me;
As a mason all alone
I will raise it, stone by stone,
And every stone where I have bled
Will show a sign of dusky red.
I have not gone the way in vain,
For I have good of all my pain;
My spirit's quiet house will be
Built of naked stones I trod
On roads where I lost sight of God.
* * *
August Moonrise
(from Flame and Shadow, 1920)
The sun was gone, and the moon was coming
Over the blue Connecticut hills;
The west was rosy, the east was flushed,
And over my head the swallows rushed
This way and that, with changeful wills.
I heard them twitter and watched them dart
Now together and now apart
Like dark petals blown from a tree;
The maples stamped against the west
Were black and stately and full of rest,
And the hazy orange moon grew up
And slowly changed to yellow gold
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.
Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool
O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made me drunk and wild
Ever since I was a child,
But when have I been sure as now
That no bitterneww can bend
And no sorrow wholly bow
One who loves you to the end?
And though I must give my breath
And my laughter all to death,
And my eyes through which joy came,
And my heart, a wavering flame;
If all must leave me and go back
Along a blind and fearful track
So that you can make anew,
Fusing with intenser fire,
Something nearer your desire;
If my soul must go alone
Through a cold infinity,
Or even if it vanish, too,
Beauty, I have worshipped you.
Let this single hour atone
For the theft of all of me.
* * *
"There Will Come Soft Rains" (War Time)
(from Flame and Shadow, 1920)
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
No one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
* * *
"I Thought of You"
(from Flame and Shadow, 1920)
I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.
Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea-
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.
* * *
Snowfall
(from Flame and Shadow, 1920)
"She can't be unhappy," you said,
"The smiles are like stars in her eyes,
And her laugh is thistledown
Around her low replies."
"Is she unhappy?" you said-
But who has ever known
Another's heartbreak-
All he can know is his own;
And she seems hushed to me,
As hushed as though
Her heart were a hunter's fire
Smothered in snow.
* * *
Epitaph
(from Dark of the Moon, 1926)
Serene descent, as a red leaf's descending
When there is neighter wind nor noise of rain,
But only autumn air and the unending
Drawing of all things to the earth again:
So be it; let the snow sift deep and cover
All that was drunken once with light and air;
The earth will not regret her tireless lover,
Nor he awake to know she does not care.
* * *
The Crystal Gazer
(from Dark of the Moon, 1926)
I shall gather myself into myself again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
Fusing them into a polished crystal ball
Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.
I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,
Watching the future come and the present go,
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In restless self-importance to and fro.
* * *
Wind Elegy (W.E.W.)
(from Dark of the Moon, 1926)
Only the wind knows he is gone,
Only the wind grieves,
The sun shines, the fileds are sown,
Sparrows mate in the eaves;
But I heard the wind in the pines he planted
And the hemlocks overhead,
His acres wake, for the year turns,
But he is alseep," it said.
* * *
An End
(from Dark of the Moon, 1926)
I have no heart for any other joy,
The drenched September day turns to depart,
And I have said good-bye to what I love;
With my own will I vanquished my own heart.
On the long wind I hear the winter coming,
The window panes are cold and blind with rain;
With my own will I turned the summer from me
And summer will not come to me again.
* * *
On a March Day
(from Dark of the Moon, 1926)
Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind
That shakes the naked shadows on the ground,
Making a key-board of the earth to strike
From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound,
Bear witness for me that I loved my life,
All things that hurt me and all things that healed,
And that I swore to it this day in March,
Here at the edge of this new-broken field.
You only knew me, tell them I was glad
For every hour since my hour of birth,
And that I ceased to fear, as once I feared,
The last complete reunion with the earth.
* * *
Advice to a Girl
(from Strange Victory, 1933)
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.
* * *
Strange Victory
(from Strange Victory, 1933)
To this, to this, after my hope was lost,
To this strange victory;
To find you with the living, not the dead,
To find you glad of me;
To find you wounded even less than I,
Moving as I across the stricken plain;
After the battle to have found your voice
Lifted above the slain.