Complete Works of Sara Teasdale Read online

  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.

  PART II. Memories

  Places

  Places I love come back to me like music,

  Hush me and heal me when I am very tired;

  I see the oak woods at Saxton’s flaming

  In a flare of crimson by the frost newly fired;

  And I am thirsty for the spring in the valley

  As for a kiss ungiven and long desired.

  I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton,

  A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees,

  The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle

  Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze,

  And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust

  With the winter sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees.

  Violet now, in veil on veil of evening

  The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far;

  A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol

  In the heart of the hollow where the dark pools are;

  The primrose has opened her pale yellow flowers

  And heaven is lighting star after star.

  Places I love come back to me like music —

  Mid-ocean, midnight, the waves buzz drowsily;

  In the ship’s deep churning the eerie phosphorescence

  Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea,

  And I can hear a man’s voice, speaking, hushed, insistent,

  At midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me.

  Old Tunes

  As the waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose,

  Float in the garden when no wind blows,

  Come to us, go from us, whence no one knows;

  So the old tunes float in my mind,

  And go from me leaving no trace behind,

  Like fragrance borne on the hush of the wind.

  But in the instant the airs remain

  I know the laughter and the pain

  Of times that will not come again.

  I try to catch at many a tune

  Like petals of light fallen from the moon,

  Broken and bright on a dark lagoon,

  But they float away — for who can hold

  Youth, or perfume or the moon’s gold?

  Only in Sleep

  Only in sleep I see their faces,

  Children I played with when I was a child,

  Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,

  Annie with ringlets warm and wild.

  Only in sleep Time is forgotten —

  What may have come to them, who can know?

  Yet we played last night as long ago,

  And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.

  The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,

  I met their eyes and found them mild —

  Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,

  And for them am I too a child?

  Redbirds

  Redbirds, redbirds,

  Long and long ago,

  What a honey-call you had

  In hills I used to know;

  Redbud, buckberry,

  Wild plum-tree

  And proud river sweeping

  Southward to the sea,

  Brown and gold in the sun

  Sparkling far below,

  Trailing stately round her bluffs

  Where the poplars grow —

  Redbirds, redbirds,

  Are you singing still

  As you sang one May day

  On Saxton’s Hill?

  Sunset: St. Louis

  Hushed in the smoky haze of summer sunset,

  When I came home again from far-off places,

  How many times I saw my western city

  Dream by her river.

  Then for an hour the water wore a mantle

  Of tawny gold and mauve and misted turquoise

  Under the tall and darkened arches bearing

  Gray, high-flung bridges.

  Against the sunset, water-towers and steeples

  Flickered with fire up the slope to westward,

  And old warehouses poured their purple shadows

  Across the levee.

  High over them the black train swept with thunder,

  Cleaving the city, leaving far beneath it

  Wharf-boats moored beside the old side-wheelers

  Resting in twilight.

  The Coin

  Into my heart’s treasury

  I slipped a coin

  That time cannot take

  Nor a thief purloin, —

  Oh better than the minting

  Of a gold-crowned king

  Is the safe-kept memory

  Of a lovely thing.

  The Voice

  Atoms as old as stars,

  Mutation on mutation,

  Millions and millions of cells

  Dividing yet still the same,

  From air and changing earth,

  From ancient Eastern rivers,

  From turquoise tropic seas,

  Unto myself I came.

  My spirit like my flesh

  Sprang from a thousand sources,

  From cave-man, hunter and shepherd,

  From Karnak, Cyprus, Rome;

  The living thoughts in me

  Spring from dead men and women,

  Forgotten time out of mind

  And many as bubbles of foam.

  Here for a moment’s space

  Into the light out of darkness,

  I come and they come with me

  Finding words with my breath;

  From the wisdom of many life-times

  I hear them cry: “Forever

  Seek for Beauty, she only

  Fights with man against Death!”

  PART III.

  Day and Night

  In Warsaw in Poland

  Half the world away,

  The one I love best of all

  Thought of me to-day;

  I know, for I went

  Winged as a bird,

  In the wide flowing wind

  His own voice I heard;

  His arms were round me

  In a ferny place,

  I looked in the pool

  And there was his face —

  But now it is night

  And the cold stars say:

  “Warsaw in Poland

  Is half the world away.”

  Compensation

  I should be glad of loneliness

  And hours that go on broken wings,

  A thirsty body, a tired heart

  And the unchanging ache of things,

  If I could make a single song

  As lovely and as full of light,

  As hushed and brief as a falling star

  On a winter night.

  I Remembered

  There never was a mood of mine,

  Gay or heart-broken, luminous or dull,

  But you could ease me of its fever

  And give it back to me more beautiful.

  In many another soul I broke the bread,

  And drank the wine and played the happy guest,

  But I was lonely, I remembered you;

  The heart belongs to him who knew it best.

  Oh You Are Coming

  Oh you are coming, coming, coming,

  How will hungry Time put by the hours till then? —

  But why does it anger my heart to long so

  For one man out of the world of men?

  Oh I would live in myself only

  And build my life lightly and still as a dream —

  Are not my thoughts clearer than your thoughts

  And colored like stones in a running stream?

  Now the slow
moon brightens in heaven,

  The stars are ready, the night is here —

  Oh why must I lose myself to love you,

  My dear?

  The Return

  He has come, he is here,

  My love has come home,

  The minutes are lighter

  Than flying foam,

  The hours are like dancers

  On gold-slippered feet,

  The days are young runners

  Naked and fleet —

  For my love has returned,

  He is home, he is here,

  In the whole world no other

  Is dear as my dear!

  Gray Eyes

  It was April when you came

  The first time to me,

  And my first look in your eyes

  Was like my first look at the sea.

  We have been together

  Four Aprils now

  Watching for the green

  On the swaying willow bough;

  Yet whenever I turn

  To your gray eyes over me,

  It is as though I looked

  For the first time at the sea.

  The Net

  I made you many and many a song,

  Yet never one told all you are —

  It was as though a net of words

  Were flung to catch a star;

  It was as though I curved my hand

  And dipped sea-water eagerly,

  Only to find it lost the blue

  Dark splendor of the sea.

  The Mystery

  Your eyes drink of me,

  Love makes them shine,

  Your eyes that lean

  So close to mine.

  We have long been lovers,

  We know the range

  Of each other’s moods

  And how they change;

  But when we look

  At each other so

  Then we feel

  How little we know;

  The spirit eludes us,

  Timid and free —

  Can I ever know you

  Or you know me?

  PART IV. In a Hospital

  Open Windows

  Out of the window a sea of green trees

  Lift their soft boughs like the arms of a dancer,

  They beckon and call me, “Come out in the sun!”

  But I cannot answer.

  I am alone with Weakness and Pain,

  Sick abed and June is going,

  I cannot keep her, she hurries by

  With the silver-green of her garments blowing.

  Men and women pass in the street

  Glad of the shining sapphire weather,

  But we know more of it than they,

  Pain and I together.

  They are the runners in the sun,

  Breathless and blinded by the race,

  But we are watchers in the shade

  Who speak with Wonder face to face.

  The New Moon

  Day, you have bruised and beaten me,

  As rain beats down the bright, proud sea,

  Beaten my body, bruised my soul,

  Left me nothing lovely or whole —

  Yet I have wrested a gift from you,

  Day that dies in dusky blue:

  For suddenly over the factories

  I saw a moon in the cloudy seas —

  A wisp of beauty all alone

  In a world as hard and gray as stone —

  Oh who could be bitter and want to die

  When a maiden moon wakes up in the sky?

  Eight O’Clock

  Supper comes at five o’clock,

  At six, the evening star,

  My lover comes at eight o’clock —

  But eight o’clock is far.

  How could I bear my pain all day

  Unless I watched to see

  The clock-hands laboring to bring

  Eight o’clock to me.

  Lost Things

  Oh, I could let the world go by,

  Its loud new wonders and its wars,

  But how will I give up the sky

  When winter dusk is set with stars?

  And I could let the cities go,

  Their changing customs and their creeds, —

  But oh, the summer rains that blow

  In silver on the jewel-weeds!

  Pain

  Waves are the sea’s white daughters,

  And raindrops the children of rain,

  But why for my shimmering body

  Have I a mother like Pain?

  Night is the mother of stars,

  And wind the mother of foam —

  The world is brimming with beauty,

  But I must stay at home.

  The Broken Field

  My soul is a dark ploughed field

  In the cold rain;

  My soul is a broken field

  Ploughed by pain.

  Where grass and bending flowers

  Were growing,

  The field lies broken now

  For another sowing.

  Great Sower when you tread

  My field again,

  Scatter the furrows there

  With better grain.

  The Unseen

  Death went up the hall

  Unseen by every one,

  Trailing twilight robes

  Past the nurse and the nun.

  He paused at every door

  And listened to the breath

  Of those who did not know

  How near they were to Death.

  Death went up the hall

  Unseen by nurse and nun;

  He passed by many a door —

  But he entered one.

  A Prayer

  When I am dying, let me know

  That I loved the blowing snow

  Although it stung like whips;

  That I loved all lovely things

  And I tried to take their stings

  With gay unembittered lips;

  That I loved with all my strength,

  To my soul’s full depth and length,

  Careless if my heart must break,

  That I sang as children sing

  Fitting tunes to everything,

  Loving life for its own sake.

  PART V.

  Spring Torrents

  Will it always be like this until I am dead,

  Every spring must I bear it all again

  With the first red haze of the budding maple boughs,

  And the first sweet-smelling rain?

  Oh I am like a rock in the rising river

  Where the flooded water breaks with a low call —

  Like a rock that knows the cry of the waters

  And cannot answer at all.

  I Know the Stars

  I know the stars by their names,

  Aldebaran, Altair,

  And I know the path they take

  Up heaven’s broad blue stair.

  I know the secrets of men

  By the look of their eyes,

  Their gray thoughts, their strange thoughts

  Have made me sad and wise.

  But your eyes are dark to me

  Though they seem to call and call —

  I cannot tell if you love me

  Or do not love me at all.

  I know many things,

  But the years come and go,

  I shall die not knowing

  The thing I long to know.

  Understanding

  I understood the rest too well,

  And all their thoughts have come to be

  Clear as grey sea-weed in the swell

  Of a sunny shallow sea.

  But you I never understood,

  Your spirit’s secret hides like gold

  Sunk in a Spanish galleon

  Ages ago in waters cold.

  Nightfall

  We will never walk again

  As we used to walk at night,

  Watching our shadows lengthen

>   Under the gold street-light

  When the snow was new and white.

  We will never walk again

  Slowly, we two,

  In spring when the park is sweet

  With midnight and with dew,

  And the passers-by are few.

  I sit and think of it all,

  And the blue June twilight dies, —

  Down in the clanging square

  A street-piano cries

  And stars come out in the skies.

  It Is Not a Word

  It is not a word spoken,

  Few words are said;

  Nor even a look of the eyes

  Nor a bend of the head,

  But only a hush of the heart

  That has too much to keep,

  Only memories waking

  That sleep so light a sleep.

  My Heart Is Heavy

  My heart is heavy with many a song

  Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,

  But I can never give you one —

  My songs do not belong to me.

  Yet in the evening, in the dusk

  When moths go to and fro,

  In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,

  Take it, no one will know.

  The Nights Remember

  The days remember and the nights remember

  The kingly hours that once you made so great,

  Deep in my heart they lie, hidden in their splendor,

  Buried like sovereigns in their robes of state.

  Let them not wake again, better to lie there,

  Wrapped in memories, jewelled and arrayed —

  Many a ghostly king has waked from death-sleep

  And found his crown stolen and his throne decayed.

  Let It Be Forgotten

  Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,

  Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,

  Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,

  Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.