Complete Works of Sara Teasdale Read online

  Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude

  Beyond the lure of light Alcaeus’ lyre,

  Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna’s voice.

  Ah, never with a throat that aches with song,

  Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring,

  Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love

  The quiver and the crying of my heart.

  Still I remember how I strove to flee

  The love-note of the birds, and bowed my head

  To hurry faster, but upon the ground

  I saw two wingèd shadows side by side,

  And all the world’s spring passion stifled me.

  Ah, Love there is no fleeing from thy might,

  No lonely place where thou hast never trod,

  No desert thou hast left uncarpeted

  With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet.

  In many guises didst thou come to me;

  I saw thee by the maidens while they danced,

  Phaon allured me with a look of thine,

  In Anactoria I knew thy grace,

  I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes;

  But never wholly, soul and body mine,

  Didst thou bid any love me as I loved.

  Now have I found the peace that fled from me;

  Close, close against my heart I hold my world.

  Ah, Love that made my life a Iyric cry,

  Ah, Love that tuned my lips to Iyres of thine,

  I taught the world thy music, now alone

  I sing for one who falls asleep to hear.

  Love Songs, 1917

  CONTENTS

  To E.

  PART I.

  Barter

  Twilight

  Night Song at Amalfi

  The Look

  A Winter Night

  A Cry

  Gifts

  But Not to Me

  Song at Capri

  Child, Child

  Love Me

  Pierrot

  Wild Asters

  The Song for Colin

  Four Winds

  Debt

  Faults

  Buried Love

  The Fountain

  I Shall Not Care

  After Parting

  A Prayer

  Spring Night

  May Wind

  Tides

  After Love

  New Love and Old

  The Kiss

  Swans

  The River

  November

  Spring Rain

  The Ghost

  Summer Night, Riverside

  The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.

  Jewels

  PART II.

  Interlude: Songs out of Sorrow

  I. Spirit’s House

  II. Mastery

  III. Lessons

  IV. Wisdom

  V. In a Burying Ground

  VI. Wood Song

  VII. Refuge

  PART III.

  Dew

  To-night

  Ebb Tide

  I Would Live in Your Love

  Because

  The Tree of Song

  The Giver

  April Song

  The Wanderer

  The Years

  Enough

  Come

  Joy

  Riches

  Dusk in War Time

  Peace

  Moods

  Houses of Dreams

  Lights

  I Am Not Yours

  Doubt

  The Wind

  Morning

  Other Men

  Embers

  Message

  The Lamp

  PART IV.

  A November Night

  The first edition

  The first edition’s title page

  To E.

  I have remembered beauty in the night,

  Against black silences I waked to see

  A shower of sunlight over Italy

  And green Ravello dreaming on her height;

  I have remembered music in the dark,

  The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach’s,

  And running water singing on the rocks

  When once in English woods I heard a lark.

  But all remembered beauty is no more

  Than a vague prelude to the thought of you —

  You are the rarest soul I ever knew,

  Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;

  My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,

  And when I think of you, I am at rest.

  PART I.

  Barter

  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.

  Twilight

  Dreamily over the roofs

  The cold spring rain is falling;

  Out in the lonely tree

  A bird is calling, calling.

  Slowly over the earth

  The wings of night are falling;

  My heart like the bird in the tree

  Is calling, calling, calling.

  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?

  The Look

  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.

  A Winter Night

  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.

  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.

  Gifts

  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.

  But Not to Me

  The April night is still and sweet

  With flowers on every tree;

  Peace comes to them on quiet feet,

  But not to me.

  My peace is hidden in his breast

  Where I shall never be;

  Love comes to-night to all the rest,

  But not to me.

  Song at 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.

  Child, Child

  Child, child, love while you can

  The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man;

  Never fear though it break your heart —

  Out of the wound new joy will start;

  Only love proudly and gladly and well,

  Though love be heaven or love be hell.

  Child, child, love while you may,

  For life is short as a happy day;

  Never fear the thing you feel —

  Only by love is life made real;

  Love, for the deadly sins are seven,

  Only through love will you enter heaven.

  Love Me

  Brown-thrush singing all day long

  In the leaves above me,

  Take my love this April song,

  “Love me, love me, love me!”

  When he harkens what you say,

  Bid him, lest he miss me,

  Leave his work or leave his play,

  And kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!

  Pierrot

  Pierrot stands in the garden

  Beneath a waning moon,

  And on his lute he fashions

  A fragile silver tune.

  Pierrot plays in the garden,

  He thinks he plays for me,

  But I am quite forgotten

  Under the cherry tree.

  Pierrot plays in the garden,

  And all the roses know

  That Pierrot loves his music, —

  But I love Pierrot.

  Wild Asters

  In the spring I asked the daisies

  If his words were true,

  And the clever, clear-eyed daisies

  Always knew.

  Now the fields are brown and barren,

  Bitter autumn blows,

  And of all the stupid asters

  Not one knows.

  The Song for Colin

  I sang a song at dusking time

  Beneath the evening star,

  And Terence left his latest rhyme

  To answer from afar.

  Pierrot laid down his lute to weep,

  And sighed, “She sings for me.”

  But Colin slept a careless sleep

  Beneath an apple tree.

  Four Winds

  “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.”

  Said 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.”

  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 open gate

  That led through heaven’s wall.

  Faults

  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.

  Buried Love

  I have come to bury Love

  Beneath a tree,

  In the forest tall and black

  Where none can see.

  I shall put no flowers at his head,

  Nor stone at his feet,

  For the mouth I loved so much

  Was bittersweet.

  I shall go no more to his grave,

  For the woods are cold.

  I shall gather as much of joy

  As my hands can hold.

  I shall stay all day in the sun

  Where the wide winds blow, —

  But oh, I shall cry at night

  When none will know.

  The Fountain

  All through 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

  While on the marble rim

  The milk-white peacocks slept,

  And 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.

  I Shall Not Care

  When I am dead and over me bright April

  Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,

  Though 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.

  After Parting

  Oh, I have sown my love so wide

  That he will find it everywhere;

  It will awake him in the night,

  It will enfold him in the air.

  I set my shadow in his sight

  And I have winged it with desire,

  That it may be a cloud by day,

  And in the night a shaft of fire.

  A Prayer

  Until I lose my soul and lie

  Blind to the beauty of the earth,

  Deaf though shouting wind goes by,

  Dumb in a storm of mirth;

  Until my heart is quenched at length

  And I have left the land of men,

  Oh, let me love with all my strength

  Careless if I am loved again.

  Spring Night

  The park is filled with night and fog,

  The veils are drawn about the world,

  The drowsy lights along the paths

  Are dim and pearled.

  Gold and gleaming the empty streets,

  Gold and gleaming the misty lake,

  The mirrored lights like sunken swords,

  Glimmer and shake.

  Oh, is it not enough to be

  Here with this beauty over me?

  My throat should ache with praise, and I

  Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.

  O, beauty, are you not enough?

  Why am I crying after love,

  With youth, a singing voice, and eyes

  To take earth’s wonder with surprise?

  Why have I put off my pride,

  Why am I unsatisfied, —

  I, for whom the pensive night

>   Binds her cloudy hair with light, —

  I, for whom all beauty burns

  Like incense in a million urns?

  O beauty, are you not enough?

  Why am I crying after love?

  May Wind

  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.”

  Tides

  Love in my heart was a fresh tide flowing

  Where the starlike sea gulls soar;

  The sun was keen and the foam was blowing

  High on the rocky shore.

  But now in the dusk the tide is turning,

  Lower the sea gulls soar,

  And the waves that rose in resistless yearning

  Are broken forevermore.

  After Love

  There is no magic any more,

  We meet as other people do,

  You work no miracle for me

  Nor I for you.

  You were the wind and I the sea —

  There is no splendor any more,

  I have grown listless as the pool

  Beside the shore.

  But though the pool is safe from storm

  And from the tide has found surcease,

  It grows more bitter than the sea,

  For all its peace.

  New Love and Old

  In my heart the old love

  Struggled with the new;

  It was ghostly waking

  All night through.

  Dear things, kind things,

  That my old love said,

  Ranged themselves reproachfully

  Round my bed.

  But I could not heed them,

  For I seemed to see

  The eyes of my new love

  Fixed on me.

  Old love, old love,

  How can I be true?