Complete Works of Sara Teasdale Read online

  Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,

  How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest,

  The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave

  Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world.

  I am so weak a thing, praise me for this,

  That in some strange way I was strong enough

  To keep my love unuttered and to stand

  Altho’ I longed to kneel to you that night

  You looked at me with ever-calling eyes.

  Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love

  You thought it something delicate and free,

  Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind,

  Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam.

  Yet in my heart there was a beating storm

  Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove

  To say too little lest I say too much,

  And from my eyes to drive love’s happy shame.

  Yet when I heard your name the first far time

  It seemed like other names to me, and I

  Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river

  That nears at last its long predestined sea;

  And when you spoke to me, I did not know

  That to my life’s high altar came its priest.

  But now I know between my God and me

  You stand forever, nearer God than I,

  And in your hands with faith and utter joy

  I would that I could lay my woman’s soul.

  Oh, my love

  To whom I cannot come with any gift

  Of body or of soul, I pass and go.

  But sometimes when you hear blown back to you

  My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears,

  Know that I sang for you alone to hear,

  And that I wondered if the wind would bring

  To him who tuned my heart its distant song.

  So might a woman who in loneliness

  Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come,

  Wonder if it would please its father’s eyes.

  But long before I ever heard your name,

  Always the undertone’s unchanging note

  In all my singing had prefigured you,

  Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame.

  Yet I was free as an untethered cloud

  In the great space between the sky and sea,

  And might have blown before the wind of joy

  Like a bright banner woven by the sun.

  I did not know the longing in the night —

  You who have waked me cannot give me sleep.

  All things in all the world can rest, but I,

  Even the smooth brief respite of a wave

  When it gives up its broken crown of foam,

  Even that little rest I may not have.

  And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy

  In all the piercing beauty of the world

  I would give up — go blind forevermore,

  Rather than have God blot from out my soul

  Remembrance of your voice that said my name.

  For us no starlight stilled the April fields,

  No birds awoke in darkling trees for us,

  Yet where we walked the city’s street that night

  Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring,

  And in our path we left a trail of light

  Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea

  When night submerges in the vessel’s wake

  A heaven of unborn evanescent stars.

  VIGNETTES OVERSEAS

  I

  Off Gibraltar

  BEYOND the sleepy hills of Spain,

  The sun goes down in yellow mist,

  The sky is fresh with dewy stars

  Above a sea of amethyst.

  Yet in the city of my love

  High noon burns all the heavens bare —

  For him the happiness of light,

  For me a delicate despair.

  II

  Off Algiers

  Oh give me neither love nor tears,

  Nor dreams that sear the night with fire,

  Go lightly on your pilgrimage

  Unburdened by desire.

  Forget me for a month, a year,

  But, oh, beloved, think of me

  When unexpected beauty burns

  Like sudden sunlight on the sea.

  III

  Naples

  Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light,

  Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight,

  Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea,

  Naples crowds her million roofs close as close can be;

  Round about the mountain’s crest a flag of smoke is hung —

  Oh when God made Italy he was gay and young!

  IV

  Capri

  When beauty grows too great to bear

  How shall I ease me of its ache,

  For beauty more than bitterness

  Makes the heart break.

  Now while I watch the dreaming sea

  With isles like flowers against her breast,

  Only one voice in all the world

  Could give me rest.

  V

  Night Song at Amalfi

  I asked the heaven of stars

  What I should give my love —

  It answered me with silence,

  Silence above.

  I asked the darkened sea

  Down where the fishers go —

  It answered me with silence,

  Silence below.

  Oh, I could give him weeping,

  Or I could give him song —

  But how can I give silence

  My whole life long?

  VI

  Ruins of Paestum

  On lowlands where the temples lie

  The marsh-grass mingles with the flowers,

  Only the little songs of birds

  Link the unbroken hours.

  So in the end, above my heart

  Once like the city wild and gay,

  The slow white stars will pass by night,

  The swift brown birds by day.

  VII

  Rome

  Oh for the rising moon

  Over the roofs of Rome,

  And swallows in the dusk

  Circling a darkened dome!

  Oh for the measured dawns

  That pass with folded wings —

  How can I let them go

  With unremembered things?

  VIII

  Florence

  The bells ring over the Anno,

  Midnight, the long, long chime;

  Here in the quivering darkness

  I am afraid of time.

  Oh, gray bells cease your tolling,

  Time takes too much from me,

  And yet to rock and river

  He gives eternity.

  IX

  Villa Serbelloni, Bellaggio

  The fountain shivers lightly in the rain,

  The laurels drip, the fading roses fall,

  The marble satyr plays a mournful strain

  That leaves the rainy fragrance musical.

  Oh dripping laurel, Phoebus sacred tree,

  Would that swift Daphne’s lot might come to me,

  Then would I still my soul and for an hour

  Change to a laurel in the glancing shower.

  X

  Stresa

  The moon grows out of the hills

  A yellow flower,

  The lake is a dreamy bride

  Who waits her hour.

  Beauty has filled my heart,

  It can hold no more,

  It is full, as the lake is full,

  From shore to shore.

  XI

  Hamburg

  The day that I come home,

  What will you find to say, —

  Words as light as foam

  With laughter light as spray?

  Yet say what words you will

 
; The day that I come home;

  I shall hear the whole deep ocean

  Beating under the foam.

  PART V.

  SAPPHO

  I

  MIDNIGHT, and in the darkness not a sound,

  So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night;

  Only the white immortal stars shall know,

  Here in the house with the low-lintelled door,

  How, for the last time, I have lit the lamp.

  I think you are not wholly careless now,

  Walls that have sheltered me so many an hour,

  Bed that has brought me ecstasy and sleep,

  Floors that have borne me when a gale of joy

  Lifted my soul and made me half a god.

  Farewell! Across the threshold many feet

  Shall pass, but never Sappho’s feet again.

  Girls shall come in whom love has made aware

  Of all their swaying beauty — they shall sing,

  But never Sappho’s voice, like golden fire,

  Shall seek for heaven thru your echoing rafters.

  There shall be swallows bringing back the spring

  Over the long blue meadows of the sea,

  And south-wind playing on the reeds of rain,

  But never Sappho’s whisper in the night,

  Never her love-cry when the lover comes.

  Farewell! I close the door and make it fast.

  The little street lies meek beneath the moon,

  Running, as rivers run, to meet the sea.

  I too go seaward and shall not return.

  Oh garlands on the doorposts that I pass,

  Woven of asters and of autumn leaves,

  I make a prayer for you: Cypris be kind,

  That every lover may be given love.

  I shall not hasten lest the paving stones

  Should echo with my sandals and awake

  Those who are warm beneath the cloak of sleep,

  Lest they should rise and see me and should say,

  “Whither goes Sappho lonely in the night?”

  Whither goes Sappho? Whither all men go,

  But they go driven, straining back with fear,

  And Sappho goes as lightly as a leaf

  Blown from brown autumn forests to the sea.

  Here on the rock Zeus lifted from the waves,

  I shall await the waking of the dawn,

  Lying beneath the weight of dark as one

  Lies breathless, till the lover shall awake.

  And with the sun the sea shall cover me —

  I shall be less than the dissolving foam

  Murmuring and melting on the ebbing tide;

  I shall be less than spindrift, less than shells;

  And yet I shall be greater than the gods,

  For destiny no more can bow my soul

  As rain bows down the watch-fires on the hills.

  Yes, if my soul escape it shall aspire

  To the white heaven as flame that has its will.

  I go not bitterly, not dumb with pain,

  Not broken by the ache of love — I go

  As one grown tired lies down and hopes to sleep.

  Yet they shall say: “It was for Cercolas;

  She died because she could not bear her love.”

  They shall remember how we used to walk

  Here on the cliff beneath the oleanders

  In the long limpid twilight of the spring,

  Looking toward Lemnos, where the amber sky

  Was pierced with the faint arrow of a star.

  How should they know the wind of a new beauty

  Sweeping my soul had winnowed it with song?

  I have been glad tho’ love should come or go,

  Happy as trees that find a wind to sway them,

  Happy again when it has left them rest.

  Others shall say, “Grave Dica wrought her death.

  She would not lift her lips to take a kiss,

  Or ever lift her eyes to take a smile.

  She was a pool the winter paves with ice

  That the wild hunter in the hills must leave

  With thirst unslaked in the brief southward sun.”

  Ah Dica, it is not for thee I go;

  And not for Phaon, tho’ his ship lifts sail

  Here in the windless harbor for the south.

  Oh, darkling deities that guard the Nile,

  Watch over one whose gods are far away.

  Egypt, be kind to him, his eyes are deep —

  Yet they are wrong who say it was for him.

  How should they know that Sappho lived and died

  Faithful to love, not faithful to the lover,

  Never transfused and lost in what she loved,

  Never so wholly loving nor at peace.

  I asked for something greater than I found,

  And every time that love has made me weep,

  I have rejoiced that love could be so strong;

  For I have stood apart and watched my soul

  Caught in the gust of passion, as a bird

  With baffled wings against the dusty whirlwind

  Struggles and frees itself to find the sky.

  It is not for a single god I go;

  I have grown weary of the winds of heaven.

  I will not be a reed to hold the sound

  Of whatsoever breath the gods may blow,

  Turning my torment into music for them.

  They gave me life; the gift was bountiful,

  I lived with the swift singing strength of fire,

  Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel —

  Beauty in all things and in every hour.

  The gods have given life — I gave them song;

  The debt is paid and now I turn to go.

  The breath of dawn blows the stars out like lamps,

  There is a rim of silver on the sea,

  As one grown tired who hopes to sleep, I go.

  II

  Oh Litis, little slave, why will you sleep?

  These long Egyptian noons bend down your head

  Bowed like the yarrow with a yellow bee.

  There, lift your eyes no man has ever kindled,

  Dark eyes that wait like faggots for the fire.

  See how the temple’s solid square of shade

  Points north to Lesbos, and the splendid sea

  That you have never seen, oh evening-eyed.

  Yet have you never wondered what the Nile

  Is seeking always, restless and wild with spring

  And no less in the winter, seeking still?

  How shall I tell you? Can you think of fields

  Greater than Gods could till, more blue than night

  Sown over with the stars; and delicate

  With filmy nets of foam that come and go?

  It is more cruel and more compassionate

  Than harried earth. It takes with unconcern

  And quick forgetting, rapture of the rain

  And agony of thunder, the moon’s white

  Soft-garmented virginity, and then

  The insatiable ardor of the sun.

  And me it took. But there is one more strong,

  Love, that came laughing from the elder seas,

  The Cyprian, the mother of the world;

  She gave me love who only asked for death —

  I who had seen much sorrow in men’s eyes

  And in my own too sorrowful a fire.

  I was a sister of the stars, and yet

  Shaken with pain; sister of birds and yet

  The wings that bore my soul were very tired.

  I watched the careless spring too many times

  Light her green torches in a hungry wind;

  Too many times I watched them flare, and then

  Fall to forsaken embers in the autumn.

  And I was sick of all things — even song.

  In the dull autumn dawn I turned to death,

  Buried my living body in the sea,

  Th
e strong cold sea that takes and does not give —

  But there is one more strong, the Cyprian.

  Litis, to wake from sleep and find your eyes

  Met in their first fresh upward gaze by love,

  Filled with love’s happy shame from other eyes,

  Dazzled with tenderness and drowned in light

  As tho’ you looked unthinking at the sun,

  Oh Litis, that is joy! But if you came

  Not from the sunny shallow pool of sleep,

  But from the sea of death, the strangling sea

  Of night and nothingness, and waked to find

  Love looking down upon you, glad and still,

  Strange and yet known forever, that is peace.

  So did he lean above me. Not a word

  He spoke; I only heard the morning sea

  Singing against his happy ship, the keen

  And straining joy of wind-awakened sails

  And songs of mariners, and in myself

  The precious pain of arms that held me fast.

  They warmed the cold sea out of all my blood;

  I slept, feeling his eyes above my sleep.

  There on the ship with wines and olives laden,

  Led by the stars to far invisible ports,

  Egypt and islands of the inner seas,

  Love came to me, and Cercolas was love.

  III ¹ ¹ From “ Helen of Troy and Other Poems.”

  The twilight’s inner flame grows blue and deep,

  And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,

  The temples glimmer moon-wise in the trees.

  Twilight has veiled the little flower-face

  Here on my heart, but still the night is kind

  And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.

  Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk

  Along the surges creeping up the shore

  When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,

  And running, running till the night was black,

  Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand

  And quiver with the winds from off the sea?

  Ah quietly the shingle waits the tides

  Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me

  Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.

  I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands

  And cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet,

  From whom the sea is bitterer than death.

  Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more

  To thee, God’s daughter, powerful as God,

  It is that thou hast made my life too sweet

  To hold the added sweetness of a song.

  There is a quiet at the heart of love,

  And I have pierced the pain and come to peace

  I hold my peace, my Cleïs, on my heart;

  And softer than a little wild bird’s wing

  Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth.

  Ah never any more when spring like fire

  Will flicker in the newly opened leaves,