Complete Works of Sara Teasdale Read online

  The virginal white evening star

  Sank, and the red moon rose.

  SWALLOW FLIGHT

  I LOVE my hour of wind and light,

  I love men’s faces and their eyes,

  I love my spirit’s veering flight

  Like swallows under evening skies,

  THOUGHTS

  WHEN I can make my thoughts come forth

  To walk like ladies up and down,

  Each one puts on before the glass

  Her most becoming hat and gown.

  But oh, the shy and eager thoughts

  That hide and will not get them dressed,

  Why is it that they always seem

  So much more lovely than the rest?

  TO DICK, ON HIS SIXTH BIRTHDAY

  Tho’ I am very old and wise,

  And you are neither wise nor old,

  When I look far into your eyes,

  I know things I was never told:

  I know how flame must strain and fret

  Prisoned in a mortal net;

  How joy with over-eager wings,

  Bruises the small heart where he sings;

  How too much life, like too much gold,

  Is sometimes very hard to hold. . . .

  All that is talking — I know

  This much is true, six years ago

  An angel living near the moon

  Walked thru the sky and sang a tune

  Plucking stars to make his crown —

  And suddenly two stars fell down,

  Two falling arrows made of light.

  Six years ago this very night

  I saw them fall and wondered why

  The angel dropped them from the sky —

  But when I saw your eyes I knew

  The angel sent the stars to you.

  TO ROSE

  ROSE, when I remember you,

  Little lady, scarcely two,

  I am suddenly aware

  Of the angels in the air.

  All your softly gracious ways

  Make an island in my days

  Where my thoughts fly back to be

  Sheltered from too strong a sea.

  All your luminous delight

  Shines before me in the night

  When I grope for sleep and find

  Only shadows in my mind.

  Rose, when I remember you,

  White and glowing, pink and new,

  With so swift a sense of fun

  Altho’ life has just begun;

  With so sure a pride of place

  In your very infant face,

  I should like to make a prayer

  To the angels in the air:

  “If an angel ever brings

  Me a baby in her wings,

  Please be certain that it grows

  Very, very much like Rose.”

  THE FOUNTAIN

  On in the deep blue night

  The fountain sang alone;

  It sang to the drowsy heart

  Of the satyr carved in stone.

  The fountain sang and sang

  But the satyr never stirred —

  Only the great white moon

  In the empty heaven heard.

  The fountain sang and sang

  And on the marble rim

  The milk-white peacocks slept,

  Their dreams were strange and dim.

  Bright dew was on the grass,

  And on the ilex dew,

  The dreamy milk-white birds

  Were all a-glisten too.

  The fountain sang and sang

  The things one cannot tell,

  The dreaming peacocks stirred

  And the gleaming dew-drops fell.

  THE ROSE

  BENEATH my chamber window

  Pierrot was singing, singing;

  I heard his lute the whole night thru

  Until the east was red.

  Alas, alas, Pierrot,

  I had no rose for flinging

  Save one that drank my tears for dew

  Before its leaves were dead.

  I found it in the darkness,

  I kissed it once and threw it,

  The petals scattered over him,

  His song was turned to joy;

  And he will never know —

  Alas, the one who knew it! —

  The rose was plucked when dusk was dim

  Beside a laughing boy.

  DREAMS

  I GAVE my life to another lover,

  I gave my love, and all, and all —

  But over a dream the past will hover,

  Out of a dream the past will call.

  I tear myself from sleep with a shiver

  But on my breast a kiss is hot,

  And by my bed the ghostly giver

  Is waiting tho’ I see him not.

  I AM NOT YOURS

  I AM not yours, not lost in you,

  Not lost, altho’ I long to be

  Lost as a candle lit at noon,

  Lost as a snow-flake in the sea.

  You love me, and I find you still

  A spirit beautiful and bright,

  Yet I am I, who long to be

  Lost as a light is lost in light.

  Oh plunge me deep in love — put out

  My senses, leave me deaf and blind,

  Swept by the tempest of your love,

  A taper in a rushing wind.

  PIERROT’S SONG

  (For a picture by Dugald Walker)

  LADY, light in the east hangs low,

  Draw your veils of dream apart,

  Under the casement stands Pierrot

  Making a song to ease his heart.

  (Yet do not break the song too soon —

  I love to sing in the paling moon.)

  The petals are falling, heavy with dew,

  The stars have fainted out of the sky,

  Come to me, come, or else I too,

  Faint with the weight of love will die.

  (She comes — alas, I hoped to make

  Another stanza for her sake!)

  NIGHT IN ARIZONA

  THE moon is a charring ember

  Dying into the dark;

  Off in the crouching mountains

  Coyotes bark.

  The stars are heavy in heaven,

  Too great for the sky to hold —

  What if they fell and shattered

  The earth with gold?

  No lights are over the mesa,

  The wind is hard and wild,

  I stand at the darkened window

  And cry like a child.

  DUSK IN WAR TIME

  A HALF-HOUR more and you will lean

  To gather me close in the old sweet way —

  But oh, to the woman over the sea

  Who will come at the close of day?

  A half-hour more and I will hear

  The key in the latch and the strong quick tread —

  But oh, the woman over the sea

  Waiting at dusk for one who is dead!

  SPRING IN WAR TIME

  I FEEL the Spring far off, far off,

  The faint far scent of bud and leaf —

  Oh how can Spring take heart to come

  To a world in grief,

  Deep grief?

  The sun turns north, the days grow long,

  Later the evening star grows bright —

  How can the daylight linger on

  For men to fight,

  Still fight?

  The grass is waking in the ground,

  Soon it will rise and blow in waves —

  How can it have the heart to sway

  Over the graves,

  New graves?

  Under the boughs where lovers walked

  The apple-blooms will shed their breath —

  But what of all the lovers now

  Parted by death,

  Gray Death?

  WHILE I MAY

  WIND and hail and veering rain,

  Driven mist that veils the
day,

  Soul’s distress and body’s pain,

  I would bear you while I may.

  I would love you if I might,

  For so soon my life will be

  Buried in a lasting night,

  Even pain denied to me.

  DEBT

  WHAT do I owe to you

  Who loved me deep and long?

  You never gave my spirit wings

  Or gave my heart a song.

  But oh, to him I loved

  Who loved me not at all,

  I owe the little open gate

  That led thru heaven’s wall.

  FROM THE NORTH

  THE northern woods are delicately sweet,

  The lake is folded softly by the shore,

  But I am restless for the subway’s roar,

  The thunder and the hurrying of feet.

  I try to sleep, but still my eyelids beat

  Against the image of the tower that bore

  Me high aloft, as if thru heaven’s door

  I watched the world from God’s unshaken seat.

  I would go back and breathe with quickened sense

  The tunnel’s strong hot breath of powdered steel;

  But at the ferries I should leave the tense

  Dark air behind, and I should mount and be

  One among many who are thrilled to feel

  The first keen sea-breath from the open sea.

  THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK

  THE lightning spun your garment for the night

  Of silver filaments with fire shot thru,

  A broidery of lamps that lit for you

  The steadfast splendor of enduring light.

  The moon drifts dimly in the heaven’s height,

  Watching with wonder how the earth she knew

  That lay so long wrapped deep in dark and dew,

  Should wear upon her breast a star so white.

  The festivals of Babylon were dark

  With flaring flambeaux that the wind blew down;

  The Saturnalia were a wild boy’s lark

  With rain-quenched torches dripping thru the town —

  But you have found a god and filched from him

  A fire that neither wind nor rain can dim.

  SEA LONGING

  A THOUSAND miles beyond this sun-steeped wall

  Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand,

  The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land

  With the old murmur, long and musical;

  The windy waves mount up and curve and fall,

  And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow, —

  Tho’ I am inland far, I hear and know,

  For I was born the sea’s eternal thrall.

  I would that I were there and over me

  The cold insistence of the tide would roll,

  Quenching this burning thing men call the soul, —

  Then with the ebbing I should drift and be

  Less than the smallest shell along the shoal,

  Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea.

  THE RIVER

  I CAME from the sunny valleys

  And sought for the open sea,

  For I thought in its gray expanses

  My peace would come to me.

  I came at last to the ocean

  And found it wild and black,

  And I cried to the windless valleys,

  “Be kind and take me back!”

  But the thirsty tide ran inland,

  And the salt waves drank of me,

  And I who was fresh as the rainfall

  Am bitter as the sea.

  LEAVES

  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.

  THE ANSWER

  WHEN I go back to earth

  And all my joyous body

  Puts off the red and white

  That once had been so proud,

  If men should pass above

  With false and feeble pity,

  My dust will find a voice

  To answer them aloud:

  “Be still, I am content,

  Take back your poor compassion,

  Joy was a flame in me

  Too steady to destroy;

  Lithe as a bending reed

  Loving the storm that sways her —

  I found more joy in sorrow

  Than you could find in joy.”

  PART III.

  OVER THE ROOFS

  I

  OH chimes set high on the sunny tower

  Ring on, ring on unendingly,

  Make all the hours a single hour,

  For when the dusk begins to flower,

  The man I love will come to me! . . .

  But no, go slowly as you will,

  I should not bid you hasten so,

  For while I wait for love to come,

  Some other girl is standing dumb,

  Fearing her love will go.

  II

  Oh white steam over the roofs, blow high!

  Oh chimes in the tower ring clear and free !

  Oh sun awake in the covered sky,

  For the man I love, loves me I . . .

  Oh drifting steam disperse and die,

  Oh tower stand shrouded toward the south, —

  Fate heard afar my happy cry,

  And laid her finger on my mouth.

  III

  The dusk was blue with blowing mist,

  The lights were spangles in a veil,

  And from the clamor far below

  Floated faint music like a wail.

  It voiced what I shall never speak,

  My heart was breaking all night long,

  But when the dawn was hard and gray,

  My tears distilled into a song.

  IV

  I said, “I have shut my heart

  As one shuts an open door,

  That Love may starve therein

  And trouble me no more.”

  But over the roofs there came

  The wet new wind of May,

  And a tune blew up from the curb

  Where the street-pianos play.

  My room was white with the sun

  And Love cried out in me,

  “I am strong, I will break your heart

  Unless you set me free.”

  A CRY

  OH, there are eyes that he can see,

  And hands to make his hands rejoice,

  But to my lover I must be

  Only a voice.

  Oh, there are breasts to bear his head,

  And lips whereon his lips can lie,

  But I must be till I am dead

  Only a cry.

  CHANCE

  How many times we must have met

  Here on the street as strangers do,

  Children of chance we were, who passed

  The door of heaven and never knew.

  IMMORTAL

  So soon my body will have gone

  Beyond the sound and sight of men,

  And tho’ it wakes and suffers now,

  Its sleep will be unbroken then;

  But oh, my frail immortal soul

  That will not sleep forevermore,

  A leaf borne onward by the blast,

  A wave that never finds the shore.

 
; AFTER DEATH

  Now while my lips are living

  Their words must stay unsaid,

  And will my soul remember

  To speak when I am dead?

  Yet if my soul remembered

  You would not heed it, dear,

  For now you must not listen,

  And then you could not hear.

  TESTAMENT

  I SAID, “I will take my life

  And throw it away;

  I who was fire and song

  Will turn to clay.”

  “I will lie no more in the night

  With shaken breath,

  I will toss my heart in the air

  To be caught by Death.”

  But out of the night I heard,

  Like the inland sound of the sea,

  The hushed and terrible sob

  Of all humanity.

  Then I said, “Oh who am I

  To scorn God to his face?

  I will bow my head and stay

  And suffer with my race.”

  GIFTS

  I GAVE my first love laughter,

  I gave my second tears,

  I gave my third love silence

  Thru 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.

  PART IV.

  FROM THE SEA

  ALL beauty calls you to me, and you seem,

  Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,

  To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe

  Here on the ship’s sun-smitten topmost deck,

  With only light between the heavens and me.

  I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,

  Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,

  The eager whisper and the searching eyes.

  Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face

  Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile

  The blue unbroken circle of the sea.

  Look far away and let me ease my heart

  Of words that beat in it with broken wing.

  Look far away, and if I say too much,