Complete Works of Sara Teasdale Read online

  I woke with lips made quiet by a kiss.

  The dream is worth the dying. Do not smile

  So sadly on me with your shining eyes,

  You who can set your sorrow to a song

  And ease your hurt by singing. But to me

  My songs are less than sea-sand that the wind

  Drives stinging over me and bears away.

  I have no care what place the grains may fall,

  Nor of my songs, if Time shall blow them back,

  As land-wind breaks the lines of dying foam

  Along the bright wet beaches, scattering

  The flakes once more against the laboring sea,

  Into oblivion. What care have I

  To please Apollo since Love hearkens not?

  Your words will live forever, men will say

  “She was the perfect lover” — I shall die,

  I loved too much to live. Go Sappho, go —

  I hate your hands that beat so full of life,

  Go, lest my hatred hurt you. I shall die,

  But you will live to love and love again.

  He might have loved some other spring than this;

  I should have kept my life — I let it go.

  He would not love me now tho’ Cypris bound

  Her girdle round me. I am Death’s, not Love’s.

  Go from me, Sappho, back to find the sun.

  I am alone, alone. O Cyprian . . .

  Love Songs

  Song

  You bound strong sandals on my feet,

  You gave me bread and wine,

  And bade me out, ‘neath sun and stars,

  For all the world was mine.

  Oh take the sandals off my feet,

  You know not what you do;

  For all my world is in your arms,

  My sun and stars are you.

  The Rose and the Bee

  If I were a bee and you were a rose,

  Would you let me in when the gray wind blows?

  Would you hold your petals wide apart,

  Would you let me in to find your heart,

  If you were a rose?

  “If I were a rose and you were a bee,

  You should never go when you came to me,

  I should hold my love on my heart at last,

  I should close my leaves and keep you fast,

  If you were a bee.”

  The Song Maker

  I made a hundred little songs

  That told the joy and pain of love,

  And sang them blithely, tho’ I knew

  No whit thereof.

  I was a weaver deaf and blind;

  A miracle was wrought for me,

  But I have lost my skill to weave

  Since I can see.

  For while I sang — ah swift and strange!

  Love passed and touched me on the brow,

  And I who made so many songs

  Am silent now.

  Wild Asters

  In the spring I asked the daisies

  If his words were true,

  And the clever little daisies

  Always knew.

  Now the fields are brown and barren,

  Bitter autumn blows,

  And of all the stupid asters

  Not one knows.

  When Love Goes

  I

  O mother, I am sick of love,

  I cannot laugh nor lift my head,

  My bitter dreams have broken me,

  I would my love were dead.

  “Drink of the draught I brew for thee,

  Thou shalt have quiet in its stead.”

  II

  Where is the silver in the rain,

  Where is the music in the sea,

  Where is the bird that sang all day

  To break my heart with melody?

  “The night thou badst Love fly away,

  He hid them all from thee.”

  The Wayfarer

  Love entered in my heart one day,

  A sad, unwelcome guest;

  But when he begged that he might stay,

  I let him wait and rest.

  He broke my sleep with sorrowing,

  And shook my dreams with tears,

  And when my heart was fain to sing,

  He stilled its joy with fears.

  But now that he has gone his way,

  I miss the old sweet pain,

  And sometimes in the night I pray

  That he may come again.

  The Princess in the Tower

  I

  The Princess sings:

  I am the princess up in the tower

  And I dream the whole day thro’

  Of a knight who shall come with a silver spear

  And a waving plume of blue.

  I am the princess up in the tower,

  And I dream my dreams by day,

  But sometimes I wake, and my eyes are wet,

  When the dusk is deep and gray.

  For the peasant lovers go by beneath,

  I hear them laugh and kiss,

  And I forget my day-dream knight,

  And long for a love like this.

  II

  The Minstrel sings:

  I lie beside the princess’ tower,

  So close she cannot see my face,

  And watch her dreaming all day long,

  And bending with a lily’s grace.

  Her cheeks are paler than the moon

  That sails along a sunny sky,

  And yet her silent mouth is red

  Where tender words and kisses lie.

  I am a minstrel with a harp,

  For love of her my songs are sweet,

  And yet I dare not lift the voice

  That lies so far beneath her feet.

  III

  The Knight sings:

  O princess cease your dreams awhile

  And look adown your tower’s gray side —

  The princess gazes far away,

  Nor hears nor heeds the words I cried.

  Perchance my heart was overbold,

  God made her dreams too pure to break,

  She sees the angels in the air

  Fly to and fro for Mary’s sake.

  Farewell, I mount and go my way,

  — But oh her hair the sun sifts thro’ —

  The tilts and tourneys wait my spear,

  I am the Knight of the Plume of Blue.

  When Love Was Born

  When Love was born I think he lay

  Right warm on Venus’ breast,

  And whiles he smiled and whiles would play

  And whiles would take his rest.

  But always, folded out of sight,

  The wings were growing strong

  That were to bear him off in flight

  Erelong, erelong.

  The Shrine

  There is no lord within my heart,

  Left silent as an empty shrine

  Where rose and myrtle intertwine,

  Within a place apart.

  No god is there of carven stone

  To watch with still approving eyes

  My thoughts like steady incense rise;

  I dream and weep alone.

  But if I keep my altar fair,

  Some morning I shall lift my head

  From roses deftly garlanded

  To find the god is there.

  The Blind

  The birds are all a-building,

  They say the world’s a-flower,

  And still I linger lonely

  Within a barren bower.

  I weave a web of fancies

  Of tears and darkness spun.

  How shall I sing of sunlight

  Who never saw the sun?

  I hear the pipes a-blowing,

  But yet I may not dance,

  I know that Love is passing,

  I cannot catch his glance.

  And if his voice should call me

  And I with groping dim

  Should reach his place of calling
<
br />   And stretch my arms to him,

  The wind would blow between my hands

  For Joy that I shall miss,

  The rain would fall upon my mouth

  That his will never kiss.

  Love Me

  Brown-thrush singing all day long

  In the leaves above me,

  Take my love this little 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!

  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 thro’ 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.”

  Roundel

  If he could know my songs are all for him,

  At silver dawn or in the evening glow,

  Would he not smile and think it but a whim,

  If he could know?

  Or would his heart rejoice and overflow,

  As happy brooks that break their icy rim

  When April’s horns along the hillsides blow?

  I may not speak till Eros’ torch is dim,

  The god is bitter and will have it so;

  And yet to-night our fate would seem less grim

  If he could know.

  Dew

  I dream that he is mine,

  I dream that he is true,

  And all his words I keep

  As rose-leaves hold the dew.

  O little thirsty rose,

  O little heart beware,

  Lest you should hope to hold

  A hundred roses’ share.

  A Maiden

  Oh if I were the velvet rose

  Upon the red rose vine,

  I’d climb to touch his window

  And make his casement fine.

  And if I were the little bird

  That twitters on the tree,

  All day I’d sing my love for him

  Till he should harken me.

  But since I am a maiden

  I go with downcast eyes,

  And he will never hear the songs

  That he has turned to sighs.

  And since I am a maiden

  My love will never know

  That I could kiss him with a mouth

  More red than roses blow.

  I Love You

  When April bends above me

  And finds me fast asleep,

  Dust need not keep the secret

  A live heart died to keep.

  When April tells the thrushes,

  The meadow-larks will know,

  And pipe the three words lightly

  To all the winds that blow.

  Above his roof the swallows,

  In notes like far-blown rain,

  Will tell the little sparrow

  Beside his window-pane.

  O sparrow, little sparrow,

  When I am fast asleep,

  Then tell my love the secret

  That I have died to keep.

  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.

  Hidden Love

  I hid the love within my heart,

  And lit the laughter in my eyes,

  That when we meet he may not know

  My love that never dies.

  But sometimes when he dreams at night

  Of fragrant forests green and dim,

  It may be that my love crept out

  And brought the dream to him.

  And sometimes when his heart is sick

  And suddenly grows well again,

  It may be that my love was there

  To free his life of pain.

  Snow Song

  Fairy snow, fairy snow,

  Blowing, blowing everywhere,

  Would that I

  Too, could fly

  Lightly, lightly through the air.

  Like a wee, crystal star

  I should drift, I should blow

  Near, more near,

  To my dear

  Where he comes through the snow.

  I should fly to my love

  Like a flake in the storm,

  I should die,

  I should die,

  On his lips that are warm.

  Youth and the Pilgrim

  Gray pilgrim, you have journeyed far,

  I pray you tell to me

  Is there a land where Love is not,

  By shore of any sea?

  For I am weary of the god,

  And I would flee from him

  Tho’ I must take a ship and go

  Beyond the ocean’s rim.

  “I know a port where Love is not,

  The ship is in your hand,

  Then plunge your sword within your breast

  And you will reach the land.”

  The Wanderer

  I saw the sunset-colored sands,

  The Nile like flowing fire between,

  Where Rameses stares forth serene,

  And Ammon’s heavy temple stands.

  I saw the rocks where long ago,

  Above the sea that cries and breaks,

  Bright Perseus with Medusa’s snakes

  Set free the maiden white like snow.

  And many skies have covered me,

  And many winds have blown me forth,

  And I have loved the green bright north,

  And I have loved the cold sweet sea.

  But what to me are north and south,

  And what the lure of many lands,

  Since you have leaned to catch my hands

  And lay a kiss upon my mouth.

  I Would Live in Your Love

  I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,

  Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes;

  I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,

  I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul

  as it leads.

  May

  The wind is tossing the lilacs,

  The new leaves laugh in the sun,

  And the petals fall on the orchard wall,

  But for me the spring is done.

  Beneath the apple blossoms

  I go a wintry way,

  For love that smiled in April

  Is false to me in May.

  Rispetto

  Was that his step that sounded on the stair?

  Was that his knock I heard upon the door?

  I grow so tired I almost cease to care,

  And yet I would that he might come once more.

  It was the wind I heard, that mocks at me,

  The bitter wind that is more cruel than he;

  It was the wind that knocked upon the door,r />
  But he will never knock nor enter more.

  Less than the Cloud to the Wind

  Less than the cloud to the wind,

  Less than the foam to the sea,

  Less than the rose to the storm

  Am I to thee.

  More than the star to the night,

  More than the rain to the lea,

  More than heaven to earth

  Art thou to me.

  Buried Love

  I shall bury my weary 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 weep at night

  When none will know.

  Song

  O woe is me, my heart is sad,

  For I should never know

  If Love came by like any lad,

  Without his silver bow.

  Or if he left his arrows sharp

  And came a minstrel weary,

  I’d never tell him by his harp

  Nor know him for my dearie.

  “O go your ways and have no fear,

  For tho’ Love passes by,

  He’ll come a hundred times, my dear,

  Before your turn to die.”

  Pierrot

  Pierrot stands in the garden

  Beneath a waning moon,

  And on his lute he fashions

  A little 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.