Complete Works of Sara Teasdale Read online

  If anyone asks, say it was forgotten

  Long and long ago,

  As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall

  In a long forgotten snow.

  PART VI. The Dark Cup

  May Day

  A delicate fabric of bird song

  Floats in the air,

  The smell of wet wild earth

  Is everywhere.

  Red small leaves of the maple

  Are clenched like a hand,

  Like girls at their first communion

  The pear trees stand.

  Oh I must pass nothing by

  Without loving it much,

  The raindrop try with my lips,

  The grass with my touch;

  For how can I be sure

  I shall see again

  The world on the first of May

  Shining after the rain?

  Since There Is No Escape

  Since there is no escape, since at the end

  My body will be utterly destroyed,

  This hand I love as I have loved a friend,

  This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;

  Since there is no escape even for me

  Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:

  The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea

  And hours alone too still and sure for prayer —

  Since darkness waits for me, then all the more

  Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore

  In pride; and let me sing with my last breath;

  In these few hours of light I lift my head;

  Life is my lover — I shall leave the dead

  If there is any way to baffle death.

  The Dreams of My Heart

  The dreams of my heart and my mind pass,

  Nothing stays with me long,

  But I have had from a child

  The deep solace of song;

  If that should ever leave me,

  Let me find death and stay

  With things whose tunes are played out and forgotten

  Like the rain of yesterday.

  A Little While

  A little while when I am gone

  My life will live in music after me,

  As spun foam lifted and borne on

  After the wave is lost in the full sea.

  A while these nights and days will burn

  In song with the bright frailty of foam,

  Living in light before they turn

  Back to the nothingness that is their home.

  The Garden

  My heart is a garden tired with autumn,

  Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark,

  In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April,

  The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark;

  Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning,

  And golden tulips, goblets holding the rain —

  The garden will be hushed with snow, forgotten soon, forgotten —

  After the stillness, will spring come again?

  The Wine

  I cannot die, who drank delight

  From the cup of the crescent moon,

  And hungrily as men eat bread,

  Loved the scented nights of June.

  The rest may die — but is there not

  Some shining strange escape for me

  Who sought in Beauty the bright wine

  Of immortality?

  In a Cuban Garden

  Hibiscus flowers are cups of fire,

  (Love me, my lover, life will not stay)

  The bright poinsettia shakes in the wind,

  A scarlet leaf is blowing away.

  A lizard lifts his head and listens —

  Kiss me before the noon goes by,

  Here in the shade of the ceiba hide me

  From the great black vulture circling the sky.

  If I Must Go

  If I must go to heaven’s end

  Climbing the ages like a stair,

  Be near me and forever bend

  With the same eyes above me there;

  Time will fly past us like leaves flying,

  We shall not heed, for we shall be

  Beyond living, beyond dying,

  Knowing and known unchangeably.

  PART VII.

  In Spring, Santa Barbara

  I have been happy two weeks together,

  My love is coming home to me,

  Gold and silver is the weather

  And smooth as lapis is the sea.

  The earth has turned its brown to green

  After three nights of humming rain,

  And in the valleys peck and preen

  Linnets with a scarlet stain.

  High in the mountains all alone

  The wild swans whistle on the lakes,

  But I have been as still as stone,

  My heart sings only when it breaks.

  White Fog

  Heaven-invading hills are drowned

  In wide moving waves of mist,

  Phlox before my door are wound

  In dripping wreaths of amethyst.

  Ten feet away the solid earth

  Changes into melting cloud,

  There is a hush of pain and mirth,

  No bird has heart to speak aloud.

  Here in a world without a sky,

  Without the ground, without the sea,

  The one unchanging thing is I,

  Myself remains to comfort me.

  Arcturus

  Arcturus brings the spring back

  As surely now as when

  He rose on eastern islands

  For Grecian girls and men;

  The twilight is as clear a blue,

  The star as shaken and as bright,

  And the same thought he gave to them

  He gives to me to-night.

  Moonlight

  It will not hurt me when I am old,

  A running tide where moonlight burned

  Will not sting me like silver snakes;

  The years will make me sad and cold,

  It is the happy heart that breaks.

  The heart asks more than life can give,

  When that is learned, then all is learned;

  The waves break fold on jewelled fold,

  But beauty itself is fugitive,

  It will not hurt me when I am old.

  Morning Song

  A diamond of a morning

  Waked me an hour too soon;

  Dawn had taken in the stars

  And left the faint white moon.

  O white moon, you are lonely,

  It is the same with me,

  But we have the world to roam over,

  Only the lonely are free.

  Gray Fog

  A fog drifts in, the heavy laden

  Cold white ghost of the sea —

  One by one the hills go out,

  The road and the pepper-tree.

  I watch the fog float in at the window

  With the whole world gone blind,

  Everything, even my longing, drowses,

  Even the thoughts in my mind.

  I put my head on my hands before me,

  There is nothing left to be done or said,

  There is nothing to hope for, I am tired,

  And heavy as the dead.

  Bells

  At six o’clock of an autumn dusk

  With the sky in the west a rusty red,

  The bells of the mission down in the valley

  Cry out that the day is dead.

  The first star pricks as sharp as steel —

  Why am I suddenly so cold?

  Three bells, each with a separate sound

  Clang in the valley, wearily tolled.

  Bells in Venice, bells at sea,

  Bells in the valley heavy and slow —

  There is no place over the crowded world

  Where I can forget that the days go.

  Lovely Chance

  O love
ly chance, what can I do

  To give my gratefulness to you?

  You rise between myself and me

  With a wise persistency;

  I would have broken body and soul,

  But by your grace, still I am whole.

  Many a thing you did to save me,

  Many a holy gift you gave me,

  Music and friends and happy love

  More than my dearest dreaming of;

  And now in this wide twilight hour

  With earth and heaven a dark, blue flower,

  In a humble mood I bless

  Your wisdom — and your waywardness.

  You brought me even here, where I

  Live on a hill against the sky

  And look on mountains and the sea

  And a thin white moon in the pepper tree.

  PART VIII.

  There Will Come Soft Rains. (War Time)

  There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

  And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

  And frogs in the pools singing at night,

  And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

  Robins will wear their feathery fire

  Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

  And not one will know of the war, not one

  Will care at last when it is done.

  Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

  If mankind perished utterly;

  And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

  Would scarcely know that we were gone.

  In a Garden

  The world is resting without sound or motion,

  Behind the apple tree the sun goes down

  Painting with fire the spires and the windows

  In the elm-shaded town.

  Beyond the calm Connecticut the hills lie

  Silvered with haze as fruits still fresh with bloom,

  The swallows weave in flight across the zenith

  On an aerial loom.

  Into the garden peace comes back with twilight,

  Peace that since noon had left the purple phlox,

  The heavy-headed asters, the late roses

  And swaying hollyhocks.

  For at high-noon I heard from this same garden

  The far-off murmur as when many come;

  Up from the village surged the blind and beating

  Red music of a drum;

  And the hysterical sharp fife that shattered

  The brittle autumn air,

  While they came, the young men marching

  Past the village square. . . .

  Across the calm Connecticut the hills change

  To violet, the veils of dusk are deep —

  Earth takes her children’s many sorrows calmly

  And stills herself to sleep.

  Nahant

  Bowed as an elm under the weight of its beauty,

  So earth is bowed, under her weight of splendor,

  Molten sea, richness of leaves and the burnished

  Bronze of sea-grasses.

  Clefts in the cliff shelter the purple sand-peas

  And chicory flowers bluer than the ocean

  Flinging its foam high, white fire in sunshine,

  Jewels of water.

  Joyous thunder of blown waves on the ledges,

  Make me forget war and the dark war-sorrow —

  Against the sky a sentry paces the sea-cliff

  Slim in his khaki.

  Winter Stars

  I went out at night alone;

  The young blood flowing beyond the sea

  Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings —

  I bore my sorrow heavily.

  But when I lifted up my head

  From shadows shaken on the snow,

  I saw Orion in the east

  Burn steadily as long ago.

  From windows in my father’s house,

  Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,

  I watched Orion as a girl

  Above another city’s lights.

  Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,

  The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,

  All things are changed, save in the east

  The faithful beauty of the stars.

  A Boy

  Out of the noise of tired people working,

  Harried with thoughts of war and lists of dead,

  His beauty met me like a fresh wind blowing,

  Clean boyish beauty and high-held head.

  Eyes that told secrets, lips that would not tell them,

  Fearless and shy the young unwearied eyes —

  Men die by millions now, because God blunders,

  Yet to have made this boy he must be wise.

  Winter Dusk

  I watch the great clear twilight

  Veiling the ice-bowed trees;

  Their branches tinkle faintly

  With crystal melodies.

  The larches bend their silver

  Over the hush of snow;

  One star is lighted in the west,

  Two in the zenith glow.

  For a moment I have forgotten

  Wars and women who mourn —

  I think of the mother who bore me

  And thank her that I was born.

  PART IX. By the Sea

  The Unchanging

  Sun-swept beaches with a light wind blowing

  From the immense blue circle of the sea,

  And the soft thunder where long waves whiten —

  These were the same for Sappho as for me.

  Two thousand years — much has gone by forever,

  Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men —

  But here on the beaches that time passes over

  The heart aches now as then.

  June Night

  Oh Earth, you are too dear to-night,

  How can I sleep while all around

  Floats rainy fragrance and the far

  Deep voice of the ocean that talks to the ground?

  Oh Earth, you gave me all I have,

  I love you, I love you, — oh what have I

  That I can give you in return —

  Except my body after I die?

  Like Barley Bending

  Like barley bending

  In low fields by the sea,

  Singing in hard wind

  Ceaselessly;

  Like barley bending

  And rising again,

  So would I, unbroken,

  Rise from pain;

  So would I softly,

  Day long, night long,

  Change my sorrow

  Into song.

  Oh Day of Fire and Sun

  Oh day of fire and sun,

  Pure as a naked flame,

  Blue sea, blue sky and dun

  Sands where he spoke my name;

  Laughter and hearts so high

  That the spirit flew off free,

  Lifting into the sky

  Diving into the sea;

  Oh day of fire and sun

  Like a crystal burning,

  Slow days go one by one,

  But you have no returning.

  I Thought of You

  I thought of you and how you love this beauty,

  And walking up the long beach all alone

  I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder

  As you and I once heard their monotone.

  Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me

  The cold and sparkling silver of the sea —

  We two will pass through death and ages lengthen

  Before you hear that sound again with me.

  On the Dunes

  If there is any life when death is over,

  These tawny beaches will know much of me,

  I shall come back, as constant and as changeful

  As the unchanging, many-colored sea.

  If life was small, if it has made me scornful,

  Forgive me; I shall straighten like a flame
r />   In the great calm of death, and if you want me

  Stand on the sea-ward dunes and call my name.

  Spray

  I knew you thought of me all night,

  I knew, though you were far away;

  I felt your love blow over me

  As if a dark wind-riven sea

  Drenched me with quivering spray.

  There are so many ways to love

  And each way has its own delight —

  Then be content to come to me

  Only as spray the beating sea

  Drives inland through the night.

  If Death Is Kind

  Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,

  We will come back to earth some fragrant night,

  And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending

  Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.

  We will come down at night to these resounding beaches

  And the long gentle thunder of the sea,

  Here for a single hour in the wide starlight

  We shall be happy, for the dead are free.

  PART X.

  Thoughts

  When I am all alone

  Envy me most,

  Then my thoughts flutter round me

  In a glimmering host;

  Some dressed in silver,

  Some dressed in white,

  Each like a taper

  Blossoming light;

  Most of them merry,

  Some of them grave,

  Each of them lithe

  As willows that wave;

  Some bearing violets,

  Some bearing bay,

  One with a burning rose

  Hidden away —

  When I am all alone

  Envy me then,

  For I have better friends

  Than women and men.

  Faces