Complete Works of Sara Teasdale Read online

  Time to read books in other tongues and listen

  To the long mellow thunder of the sea.

  The year will turn for me, I shall delight in

  All animals, and some of my own kind,

  Sharing with no one but myself the frosty

  And half ironic musings of my mind.

  I SHALL LIVE TO BE OLD

  I shall live to be old, who feared I should die young,

  I shall live to be old.

  I shall cling to life as the leaves to the creaking oak

  In the rustle of falling snow and the cold.

  The other trees let loose their leaves on the air

  In their russet and red,

  I have lived long enough to wonder which is the best,

  And to envy sometimes the way of the early dead.

  WISDOM

  It was a night of early spring,

  The winter-sleep was scarcely broken;

  Around us shadows and the wind

  Listened for what was never spoken.

  Though half a score of years are gone,

  Spring comes as sharply now as then —

  But if we had it all to do

  It would be done the same again.

  It was a spring that never came,

  But we have lived enough to know

  What we have never had, remains;

  It is the things we have that go.

  THE OLD ENEMY

  Rebellion against death, the old rebellion

  Is over; I have nothing left to fight;

  Battles have always had their meed of music

  But peace is quiet as a windless night.

  Therefore I make no songs — I have grown certain

  Save when he comes too late, death is a friend,

  A shepherd leading home his flock serenely

  Under the planet at the evening’s end.

  VII: BERKSHIRE NOTES

  WINTER SUN

  (Lenox)

  There was a bush with scarlet berries

  And there were hemlocks heaped with snow;

  With a sound like surf on long sea-beaches

  They took the wind and let it go.

  The hills were shining in their samite,

  Fold after fold they flowed away —

  “Let come what may,” your eyes were saying,

  “At least we two have had to-day.”

  A DECEMBER DAY

  Dawn turned on her purple pillow

  And late, late came the winter day,

  Snow was curved to the boughs of the willow,

  The sunless world was white and gray.

  At noon we heard a blue-jay scolding,

  At five the last thin light was lost

  From snow-banked windows faintly holding

  The feathery filigree of frost.

  FEBRUARY TWILIGHT

  I stood beside a hill

  Smooth with new-laid snow,

  A single star looked out

  From the cold evening glow.

  There was no other creature

  That saw what I could see —

  I stood and watched the evening star

  As long as it watched me.

  I HAVE SEEN THE SPRING

  Nothing is new, I have seen the spring too often;

  There have been other plum-trees white as this one

  Like a silvery cloud tethered beside the road,

  I have been waked from sleep too many times

  By birds at dawn boasting their love is beautiful.

  The grass-blades gleam in the wind, nothing is changed.

  Nothing is lost, it is all as it used to be,

  Unopened lilacs are still as deep a purple,

  The boughs of the elm are dancing still in a veil of tiny leaves,

  Nothing is lost but a few years from my life.

  WIND ELEGY

  (W. E. W.)

  Only the wind knows he is gone,

  Only the wind grieves,

  The sun shines, the fields are sown,

  Sparrows mate in the eaves;

  But I heard the wind in the pines he planted

  And the hemlocks overhead,

  “His acres wake, for the year turns,

  But he is asleep,” it said.

  IN THE WOOD

  I heard the water-fall rejoice

  Singing like a choir,

  I saw the sun flash out of it

  Azure and amber fire.

  The earth was like an open flower

  Enamelled and arrayed,

  The path I took to find its heart

  Fluttered with sun and shade.

  And while earth lured me, gently, gently,

  Happy and all alone,

  Suddenly a heavy snake

  Reared black upon a stone.

  AUTUMN DUSK

  I saw above a sea of hills

  A solitary planet shine,

  And there was no one near or far

  To keep the world from being mine.

  VIII: ARCTURUS IN AUTUMN

  ARCTURUS IN AUTUMN

  When, in the gold October dusk, I saw you near to setting,

  Arcturus, bringer of spring,

  Lord of the summer nights, leaving us now in autumn,

  Having no pity on our withering;

  Oh then I knew at last that my own autumn was upon me,

  I felt it in my blood,

  Restless as dwindling streams that still remember

  The music of their flood.

  There in the thickening dark a wind-bent tree above me

  Loosed its last leaves in flight —

  I saw you sink and vanish, pitiless Arcturus,

  You will not stay to share our lengthening night.

  I COULD SNATCH A DAY

  I could snatch a day out of the late autumn

  And set it trembling like forgotten springs,

  There would be sharp blue skies with new leaves shining

  And flying shadows cast by flying wings.

  I could take the heavy wheel of the world and break it,

  But we sit brooding while the ashes fall,

  Cowering over an old fire that dwindles,

  Waiting for nothing at all.

  AN END

  I have no heart for any other joy,

  The drenched September day turns to depart,

  And I have said good-bye to what I love;

  With my own will I vanquished my own heart.

  On the long wind I hear the winter coming,

  The window panes are cold and blind with rain;

  With my own will I turned the summer from me

  And summer will not come to me again.

  FOREKNOWN

  They brought me with a secret glee

  The news I knew before they spoke,

  And though they hoped to see me riven,

  They found me light as dry leaves driven

  Before the storm that splits an oak.

  For I had learned from many an autumn

  The way a leaf can drift and go,

  Lightly, lightly, almost gay

  Taking the unreturning way

  To mix with winter and the snow.

  WINTER

  I shall have winter now and lessening days,

  Lit by a smoky sun with slanting rays,

  And after falling leaves, the first determined frost.

  The colors of the world will all be lost.

  So be it; the faint buzzing of the snow

  Will fill the empty boughs,

  And after sleet storms I shall wake to see

  A glittering glassy plume of every tree.

  Nothing shall tempt me from my fire-lit house.

  And I shall find at night a friendly ember

  And make my life of what I can remember.

  WINTER NIGHT SONG

  Will you come as of old with singing,

  And shall I hear as of old?

  Shall I rush to open the window

  In spite of the arrowy cold? />
  Ah no, my dear, ah no,

  I shall sit by the fire reading,

  Though you sing half the night in the snow

  I shall not be heeding.

  Though your voice remembers the forest,

  The warm green light and the birds,

  Though you gather the sea in your singing

  And pour its sound into words,

  Even so, my dear, even so,

  I shall not heed you at all;

  Though your shoulders are white with snow,

  Though you strain your voice to a call,

  I shall drowse and the fire will drowse,

  The draught will be cold on the floor,

  The clock running down,

  Snow banking the door.

  NEVER AGAIN

  Never again the music blown as brightly

  Off of my heart as foam blown off a wave;

  Never again the melody that lightly

  Caressed my grief and healed the wounds it gave.

  Never again — I hear my dark thoughts clashing

  Sullen and blind as waves that beat a wall —

  Age that is coming, summer that is going,

  All I have lost or never found at all.

  THE TUNE

  I know a certain tune that my life plays;

  Over and over I have heard it start

  With all the wavering loveliness of viols

  And gain in swiftness like a runner’s heart.

  It climbs and climbs; I watch it sway in climbing

  High over time, high even over doubt,

  It has all heaven to itself — it pauses

  And faltering blindly down the air, goes out.

  IX: THE FLIGHT

  THE BELOVED

  It is enough of honor for one lifetime

  To have known you better than the rest have known,

  The shadows and the colors of your voice,

  Your will, immutable and still as stone.

  The shy heart, so lonely and so gay,

  The sad laughter and the pride of pride,

  The tenderness, the depth of tenderness

  Rich as the earth, and wide as heaven is wide.

  WHEN I AM NOT WITH YOU

  When I am not with you

  I am alone,

  For there is no one else

  And there is nothing

  That comforts me but you.

  When you are gone

  Suddenly I am sick,

  Blackness is round me,

  There is nothing left.

  I have tried many things,

  Music and cities,

  Stars in their constellations

  And the sea,

  But there is nothing

  That comforts me but you;

  And my poor pride bows down

  Like grass in a rain-storm

  Drenched with my longing.

  The night is unbearable,

  Oh let me go to you

  For there is no one,

  There is nothing

  To comfort me but you.

  ON A MARCH DAY

  Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind

  That shakes the naked shadows on the ground,

  Making a key-board of the earth to strike

  From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound,

  Bear witness for me that I loved my life,

  All things that hurt me and all things that healed,

  And that I swore to it this day in March,

  Here at the edge of this new-broken field.

  You only knew me, tell them I was glad

  For every hour since my hour of birth,

  And that I ceased to fear, as once I feared,

  The last complete reunion with the earth.

  LET IT BE YOU

  Let it be you who lean above me

  On my last day,

  Let it be you who shut my eyelids

  Forever and aye.

  Say a “Good-night” as you have said it

  All of these years,

  With the old look, with the old whisper

  And without tears.

  You will know then all that in silence

  You always knew,

  Though I have loved, I loved no other

  As I love you.

  THE FLIGHT

  We are two eagles

  Flying together

  Under the heavens,

  Over the mountains,

  Stretched on the wind.

  Sunlight heartens us,

  Blind snow baffles us,

  Clouds wheel after us

  Ravelled and thinned.

  We are like eagles,

  But when Death harries us,

  Human and humbled

  When one of us goes,

  Let the other follow,

  Let the flight be ended,

  Let the fire blacken,

  Let the book close.

  Stars To-night, 1930

  VERSES FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

  CONTENTS

  NIGHT

  LATE OCTOBER

  THE FALLING STAR

  THE SPICEBUSH IN MARCH

  CALM MORNING AT SEA

  TO ARCTURUS RETURNING

  A JUNE DAY

  RHYME OF NOVEMBER STARS

  I STOOD UPON A STAR

  WINTER NOON

  NIGHT

  Stars over snow

  And in the west a planet

  Swinging below a star —

  Look for a lovely thing and you will find it.

  It is not far —

  It never will be far.

  LATE OCTOBER

  I found ten kinds of wild flowers growing

  On a steely day that looked like snowing:

  Queen Anne’s lace, and blue heal-all,

  A buttercup, straggling, grown too tall,

  A rusty aster, a chicory flower —

  Ten I found in half an hour.

  The air was blurred with dry leaves flying,

  Gold and scarlet, gaily dying.

  A squirrel ran off with a nut in his mouth,

  And always, always, flying south,

  Twittering, the birds went by

  Flickering sharp against the sky,

  Some in great bows, some in wedges,

  Some in bands with wavering edges;

  Flocks and flocks were flying over

  With the north wind for their drover.

  “Flowers,” I said, “you’d better go,

  Surely it’s coming on for snow,” —

  They did not heed me, nor heed the birds,

  Twittering thin, far-fallen words —

  The others thought of to-morrow, but they

  Only remembered yesterday.

  THE FALLING STAR

  I saw a star slide down the sky,

  Blinding the north as it went by,

  Too burning and too quick to hold,

  Too lovely to be bought or sold,

  Good only to make wishes on

  And then forever to be gone.

  THE SPICEBUSH IN MARCH

  Spicebush, yellow spicebush, tell me

  Where you found so much clear gold?

  Every branch and every twig

  Has as much as it can hold,

  Flaunting before tattering winter

  Your new dress the wind whips round —

  Color, color! You were first,

  You dredged and drew it from the ground!

  CALM MORNING AT SEA

  Midocean like a pale blue morning-glory

  Opened wide, wide;

  The ship cut softly through the silken surface;

  We watched white sea-birds ride

  Unrocking on the holy virgin water

  Fleckless on every side.

  TO ARCTURUS RETURNING

  Arcturus, with the spring returning,

  I love you best; I cannot tell

  Why, save that your recurrent burning

  Is spring’s most punctual miracle.

&nb
sp; You bring with you all longed-for things,

  Birds with their song, leaves with their stir,

  And you, beyond all other stars,

  Have been man’s comforter.

  A JUNE DAY

  I heard a red-winged black-bird singing

  Down where the river sleeps in the reeds;

  That was morning, and at noontime

  A humming-bird flashed on the jewel-weeds;

  Clouds blew up, and in the evening

  A yellow sunset struck through the rain,

  Then blue night, and the day was ended

  That never will come again.

  RHYME OF NOVEMBER STARS

  The noiseless marching of the stars

  Sweeps above me all night long;

  Up the skies, over the skies,

  Passes the uncounted throng,

  Without haste, without rest,

  From the east to the west:

  Vega, Deneb, white Altair

  Shine like crystals in the air,

  And the lonely Fomalhaut

  In the dark south, paces low.

  Now the timid Pleiades

  Leave the shelter of the trees,

  While toward the north, mounting high,

  Gold Capella, like a queen,

  Watches over her demesne

  Stretching toward the kingly one,

  Dusky, dark Aldebaran.

  Betelguese and Rigel burn

  In their wide wheel, slow to turn,

  And in the sharp November frost

  Bright Sirius, with his blue light

  Completes the loveliness of night.

  I STOOD UPON A STAR

  I stretched my mind until I stood

  Out in space, upon a star;

  I looked, and saw the flying earth

  Where seven planets are.

  Delicately interweaving