Complete Works of Sara Teasdale Page 14

I am the still rain falling,

  Too tired for singing mirth —

  Oh, be the green fields calling,

  Oh, be for me the earth!

  I am the brown bird pining

  To leave the nest and fly —

  Oh, be the fresh cloud shining,

  Oh, be for me the sky!

  Houses of Dreams

  You took my empty dreams

  And filled them every one

  With tenderness and nobleness,

  April and the sun.

  The old empty dreams

  Where my thoughts would throng

  Are far too full of happiness

  To even hold a song.

  Oh, the empty dreams were dim

  And the empty dreams were wide,

  They were sweet and shadowy houses

  Where my thoughts could hide.

  But you took my dreams away

  And you made them all come true —

  My thoughts have no place now to play,

  And nothing now to do.

  Lights

  When we come home at night and close the door,

  Standing together in the shadowy room,

  Safe in our own love and the gentle gloom,

  Glad of familiar wall and chair and floor,

  Glad to leave far below the clanging city;

  Looking far downward to the glaring street

  Gaudy with light, yet tired with many feet,

  In both of us wells up a wordless pity;

  Men have tried hard to put away the dark;

  A million lighted windows brilliantly

  Inlay with squares of gold the winter night,

  But to us standing here there comes the stark

  Sense of the lives behind each yellow light,

  And not one wholly joyous, proud, or free.

  I Am Not Yours

  I am not yours, not lost in you,

  Not lost, although I long to be

  Lost as a candle lit at noon,

  Lost as a snowflake 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.

  Doubt

  My soul lives in my body’s house,

  And you have both the house and her —

  But sometimes she is less your own

  Than a wild, gay adventurer;

  A restless and an eager wraith,

  How can I tell what she will do —

  Oh, I am sure of my body’s faith,

  But what if my soul broke faith with you?

  The Wind

  A wind is blowing over my soul,

  I hear it cry the whole night through —

  Is there no peace for me on earth

  Except with you?

  Alas, the wind has made me wise,

  Over my naked soul it blew, —

  There is no peace for me on earth

  Even with you.

  Morning

  I went out on an April morning

  All alone, for my heart was high,

  I was a child of the shining meadow,

  I was a sister of the sky.

  There in the windy flood of morning

  Longing lifted its weight from me,

  Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,

  Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.

  Other Men

  When I talk with other men

  I always think of you —

  Your words are keener than their words,

  And they are gentler, too.

  When I look at other men,

  I wish your face were there,

  With its gray eyes and dark skin

  And tossed black hair.

  When I think of other men,

  Dreaming alone by day,

  The thought of you like a strong wind

  Blows the dreams away.

  Embers

  I said, “My youth is gone

  Like a fire beaten out by the rain,

  That will never sway and sing

  Or play with the wind again.”

  I said, “It is no great sorrow

  That quenched my youth in me,

  But only little sorrows

  Beating ceaselessly.”

  I thought my youth was gone,

  But you returned —

  Like a flame at the call of the wind

  It leaped and burned;

  Threw off its ashen cloak,

  And gowned anew

  Gave itself like a bride

  Once more to you.

  Message

  I heard a cry in the night,

  A thousand miles it came,

  Sharp as a flash of light,

  My name, my name!

  It was your voice I heard,

  You waked and loved me so —

  I send you back this word,

  I know, I know!

  The Lamp

  If I can bear your love like a lamp before me,

  When I go down the long steep Road of Darkness,

  I shall not fear the everlasting shadows,

  Nor cry in terror.

  If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,

  If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,

  Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,

  A lamp in darkness.

  PART IV.

  A November Night

  There! See the line of lights,

  A chain of stars down either side the street —

  Why can’t you lift the chain and give it to me,

  A necklace for my throat? I’d twist it round

  And you could play with it. You smile at me

  As though I were a little dreamy child

  Behind whose eyes the fairies live. . . . And see,

  The people on the street look up at us

  All envious. We are a king and queen,

  Our royal carriage is a motor bus,

  We watch our subjects with a haughty joy. . . .

  How still you are! Have you been hard at work

  And are you tired to-night? It is so long

  Since I have seen you — four whole days, I think.

  My heart is crowded full of foolish thoughts

  Like early flowers in an April meadow,

  And I must give them to you, all of them,

  Before they fade. The people I have met,

  The play I saw, the trivial, shifting things

  That loom too big or shrink too little, shadows

  That hurry, gesturing along a wall,

  Haunting or gay — and yet they all grow real

  And take their proper size here in my heart

  When you have seen them. . . . There’s the Plaza now,

  A lake of light! To-night it almost seems

  That all the lights are gathered in your eyes,

  Drawn somehow toward you. See the open park

  Lying below us with a million lamps

  Scattered in wise disorder like the stars.

  We look down on them as God must look down

  On constellations floating under Him

  Tangled in clouds. . . . Come, then, and let us walk

  Since we have reached the park. It is our garden,

  All black and blossomless this winter night,

  But we bring April with us, you and I;

  We set the whole world on the trail of spring.

  I think that every path we ever took

  Has marked our footprints in mysterious fire,

  Delicate gold that only fairies see.

  When they wake up at dawn in hollow tree-trunks

  And come out on the drowsy park, they look

  Along the empty paths and say, “Oh, here

  They we
nt, and here, and here, and here! Come, see,

  Here is their bench, take hands and let us dance

  About it in a windy ring and make

  A circle round it only they can cross

  When they come back again!” . . . Look at the lake —

  Do you remember how we watched the swans

  That night in late October while they slept?

  Swans must have stately dreams, I think. But now

  The lake bears only thin reflected lights

  That shake a little. How I long to take

  One from the cold black water — new-made gold

  To give you in your hand! And see, and see,

  There is a star, deep in the lake, a star!

  Oh, dimmer than a pearl — if you stoop down

  Your hand could almost reach it up to me. . . .

  There was a new frail yellow moon to-night —

  I wish you could have had it for a cup

  With stars like dew to fill it to the brim. . . .

  How cold it is! Even the lights are cold;

  They have put shawls of fog around them, see!

  What if the air should grow so dimly white

  That we would lose our way along the paths

  Made new by walls of moving mist receding

  The more we follow. . . . What a silver night!

  That was our bench the time you said to me

  The long new poem — but how different now,

  How eerie with the curtain of the fog

  Making it strange to all the friendly trees!

  There is no wind, and yet great curving scrolls

  Carve themselves, ever changing, in the mist.

  Walk on a little, let me stand here watching

  To see you, too, grown strange to me and far. . . .

  I used to wonder how the park would be

  If one night we could have it all alone —

  No lovers with close arm-encircled waists

  To whisper and break in upon our dreams.

  And now we have it! Every wish comes true!

  We are alone now in a fleecy world;

  Even the stars have gone. We two alone!

  Flame and Shadow, 1920

  CONTENTS

  PART I.

  Blue Squills

  Stars

  What Do I Care?

  Meadowlarks

  Driftwood

  I Have Loved Hours at Sea

  August Moonrise

  PART II. Memories

  Places

  Old Tunes

  Only in Sleep

  Redbirds

  Sunset: St. Louis

  The Coin

  The Voice

  PART III.

  Day and Night

  Compensation

  I Remembered

  Oh You Are Coming

  The Return

  Gray Eyes

  The Net

  The Mystery

  PART IV. In a Hospital

  Open Windows

  The New Moon

  Eight O’Clock

  Lost Things

  Pain

  The Broken Field

  The Unseen

  A Prayer

  PART V.

  Spring Torrents

  I Know the Stars

  Understanding

  Nightfall

  It Is Not a Word

  My Heart Is Heavy

  The Nights Remember

  Let It Be Forgotten

  PART VI. The Dark Cup

  May Day

  Since There Is No Escape

  The Dreams of My Heart

  A Little While

  The Garden

  The Wine

  In a Cuban Garden

  If I Must Go

  PART VII.

  In Spring, Santa Barbara

  White Fog

  Arcturus

  Moonlight

  Morning Song

  Gray Fog

  Bells

  Lovely Chance

  PART VIII.

  There Will Come Soft Rains. (War Time)

  In a Garden

  Nahant

  Winter Stars

  A Boy

  Winter Dusk

  PART IX. By the Sea

  The Unchanging

  June Night

  Like Barley Bending

  Oh Day of Fire and Sun

  I Thought of You

  On the Dunes

  Spray

  If Death Is Kind

  PART X.

  Thoughts

  Faces

  Evening: New York

  Snowfall

  The Silent Battle

  The Sanctuary

  At Sea

  Dust

  The Long Hill

  PART XI.

  Summer Storm

  In the End

  It Will Not Change

  Change

  Water Lilies

  Did You Never Know?

  The Treasure

  The Storm

  PART XII. Songs For Myself

  The Tree

  At Midnight

  Song Making

  Alone

  Red Maples

  Debtor

  The Wind in the Hemlock

  The first edition’s title page

  To E.

  “Recois la flamme ou l’ombre

  De tous mes jours.”

  PART I.

  Blue Squills

  How many million Aprils came

  Before I ever knew

  How white a cherry bough could be,

  A bed of squills, how blue!

  And many a dancing April

  When life is done with me,

  Will lift the blue flame of the flower

  And the white flame of the tree.

  Oh burn me with your beauty, then,

  Oh hurt me, tree and flower,

  Lest in the end death try to take

  Even this glistening hour.

  O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,

  O sunlit white and blue,

  Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,

  May bear the scar of you.

  Stars

  Alone in the night

  On a dark hill

  With pines around me

  Spicy and still,

  And a heaven full of stars

  Over my head,

  White and topaz

  And misty red;

  Myriads with beating

  Hearts of fire

  That aeons

  Cannot vex or tire;

  Up the dome of heaven

  Like a great hill,

  I watch them marching

  Stately and still,

  And I know that I

  Am honored to be

  Witness

  Of so much majesty.

  What Do I Care?

  What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,

  That my songs do not show me at all?

  For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,

  I am an answer, they are only a call.

  But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,

  Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,

  For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,

  It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.

  Meadowlarks

  In the silver light after a storm,

  Under dripping boughs of bright new green,

  I take the low path to hear the meadowlarks

  Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen.

  What have I to fear in life or death

  Who have known three things: the kiss in the night,

  The white flying joy when a song is born,

  And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.

  Driftwood

  My forefathers gave me

  My spirit’s shaken flame,

  The shape of hands, the beat of heart,

  The letters of my name.

  But
it was my lovers,

  And not my sleeping sires,

  Who gave the flame its changeful

  And iridescent fires;

  As the driftwood burning

  Learned its jewelled blaze

  From the sea’s blue splendor

  Of colored nights and days.

  I Have Loved Hours at Sea

  I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,

  The fragile secret of a flower,

  Music, the making of a poem

  That gave me heaven for an hour;

  First stars above a snowy hill,

  Voices of people kindly and wise,

  And the great look of love, long hidden,

  Found at last in meeting eyes.

  I have loved much and been loved deeply —

  Oh when my spirit’s fire burns low,

  Leave me the darkness and the stillness,

  I shall be tired and glad to go.

  August Moonrise

  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 bitterness 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,