Complete Works of Sara Teasdale Read online

  Like a cold fog wrapping us round.

  Oh in a hundred years

  Not one of these blood-warm bodies

  But will be worthless as clay.

  The anguish, the torpor, the toil

  Will have passed to other millions

  Consumed by the same desires.

  Ages will come and go,

  Darkness will blot the lights

  And the tower will be laid on the earth.

  The sea will remain

  Black and unchanging,

  The stars will look down

  Brilliant and unconcerned.

  Beloved,

  Tho’ sorrow, futility, defeat

  Surround us,

  They cannot bear us down.

  Here on the abyss of eternity

  Love has crowned us

  For a moment

  Victors.

  AT NIGHT

  WE are apart; the city grows quiet between us,

  She hushes herself, for midnight makes heavy her eyes,

  The tangle of traffic is ended, the cars are empty,

  Five streets divide us, and on them the moonlight lies.

  Oh are you asleep, or Iying awake, my lover?

  Open your dreams to my love and your heart to my words,

  I send you my thoughts-the air between us is laden,

  My thoughts fly in at your window, a flock of wild birds.

  THE YEARS

  TO-NIGHT I close my eyes and see

  A strange procession passing me —

  The years before I saw your face

  Go by me with a wistful grace;

  They pass, the sensitive shy years,

  As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears.

  The years went by and never knew

  That each one brought me nearer you;

  Their path was narrow and apart

  And yet it led me to your heart —

  Oh sensitive shy years, oh lonely years,

  That strove to sing with voices drowned in tears.

  PEACE

  PEACE flows into me

  AS the tide to the pool by the shore;

  It is mine forevermore,

  It ebbs not back like the sea.

  I am the pool of blue

  That worships the vivid sky;

  My hopes were heaven-high,

  They are all fulfilled in you.

  I am the pool of gold

  When sunset burns and dies, —

  You are my deepening skies,

  Give me your stars to hold.

  APRIL

  THE roofs are shining from the rain,

  The sparrows twitter as they fly,

  And with a windy April grace

  The little clouds go by.

  Yet the back-yards are bare and brown

  With only one unchanging tree —

  I could not be so sure of Spring

  Save that it sings in me.

  COME

  COME, when the pale moon like a petal

  Floats in the pearly dusk of spring,

  Come with arms outstretched to take me,

  Come with lips pursed up to cling.

  Come, for life is a frail moth flying

  Caught in the web of the years that pass,

  And soon we two, so warm and eager

  Will be as the gray stones in the grass.

  MOODS

  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!

  APRIL SONG

  WILLOW in your April gown

  Delicate and gleaming,

  Do you mind in years gone by

  All my dreaming?

  Spring was like a call to me

  That I could not answer,

  I was chained to loneliness,

  I, the dancer.

  Willow, twinkling in the sun,

  Still your leaves and hear me,

  I can answer spring at last,

  Love is near me!

  MAY DAY

  THE shining line of motors,

  The swaying motor-bus,

  The prancing dancing horses

  Are passing by for us.

  The sunlight on the steeple,

  The toys we stop to see,

  The smiling passing people

  Are all for you and me.

  “I love you and I love you!” —

  “And oh, I love you, too!” —

  “All of the flower girl’s lilies

  Were only grown for you!”

  Fifth Avenue and April

  And love and lack of care —

  The world is mad with music

  Too beautiful to bear.

  CROWNED

  I WEAR a crown invisible and clear,

  And go my lifted royal way apart

  Since you have crowned me softly in your heart

  With love that is half ardent, half austere;

  And as a queen disguised might pass anear

  The bitter crowd that barters in a mart,

  Veiling her pride while tears of pity start,

  I hide my glory thru a jealous fear.

  My crown shall stay a sweet and secret thing

  Kept pure with prayer at evensong and morn,

  And when you come to take it from my head,

  I shall not weep, nor will a word be said,

  But I shall kneel before you, oh my king,

  And bind my brow forever with a thorn.

  TO A CASTILIAN SONG

  WE held the book together timidly,

  Whose antique music in an alien tongue

  Once rose among the dew-drenched vines that hung

  Beneath a high Castilian balcony.

  I felt the lute strings’ ancient ecstasy,

  And while he read, my love-filled heart was stung,

  And throbbed, as where an ardent bird has clung

  The branches tremble on a blossomed tree.

  Oh lady for whose sake the song was made,

  Laid long ago in some still cypress shade,

  Divided from the man who longed for thee,

  Here in a land whose name he never heard,

  His song brought love as April brings the bird,

  And not a breath divides my love from me!

  BROADWAY

  THIS is the quiet hour; the theaters

  Have gathered in their crowds, and steadily

  The million lights blaze on for few to see,

  Robbing the sky of stars that should be hers.

  A woman waits with bag and shabby furs,

  A somber man drifts by, and only we

  Pass up the street unwearied, warm and free,

  For over us the olden magic stirs.

  Beneath the liquid splendor of the lights

  We live a little ere the charm is spent;

  This night is ours, of all the golden nights,

  The pavement an enchanted palace floor,

  And Youth the player on the viol, who sent

  A strain of music thru an open door.

  A WINTER BLUEJAY

  CRISPLY the bright snow whispered,

  Crunching beneath our feet;

  Behind us as we walked along the parkway,

  Our shadows danced,

  Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.

  Across the lake the skaters

  Flew to and fro,

  With sharp turns weaving

  A frail invisible net.

  In ecstasy the earth

  Drank the silver sunlight;

  In ecstasy the skaters

  Drank the wine of speed;

  In ecstasy we laughed

  Drinking the wine of love.

  Had not the music of our joy

  Sounded its highest note?
<
br />   But no,

  For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,

  “Oh look!”

  There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,

  Fearless and gay as our love,

  A bluejay cocked his crest!

  Oh who can tell the range of joy

  Or set the bounds of beauty?

  IN A RESTAURANT

  THE darkened street was muffled with the snow,

  The falling flakes had made your shoulders white,

  And when we found a shelter from the night

  Its glamor fell upon us like a blow.

  The clash of dishes and the viol and bow

  Mingled beneath the fever of the light.

  The heat was full of savors, and the bright

  Laughter of women lured the wine to flow.

  A little child ate nothing while she sat

  Watching a woman at a table there

  Lean to a kiss beneath a drooping hat.

  The hour went by, we rose and turned to go,

  The somber street received us from the glare,

  And once more on your shoulders fell the snow.

  JOY

  I AM wild, I will sing to the trees,

  I will sing to the stars in the sky,

  I love, I am loved, he is mine,

  Now at last I can die!

  I am sandaled with wind and with flame,

  I have heart-fire and singing to give,

  I can tread on the grass or the stars,

  Now at last I can live!

  IN A RAILROAD STATION

  WE stood in the shrill electric light,

  Dumb and sick in the whirling din

  We who had all of love to say

  And a single second to say it in.

  “Good-by!” “Good-by!” — you turned to go,

  I felt the train’s slow heavy start,

  You thought to see me cry, but oh

  My tears were hidden in my heart.

  IN THE TRAIN

  FIELDS beneath a quilt of snow

  From which the rocks and stubble peep,

  And in the west a shy white star

  That shivers as it wakes from sleep.

  The restless rumble of the train,

  The drowsy people in the car,

  Steel blue twilight in the world,

  And in my heart a timid star.

  TO ONE AWAY

  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!

  SONG

  Love me with your whole heart

  Or give no love to me,

  Half-love is a poor thing,

  Neither bond nor free.

  You must love me gladly

  Soul and body too,

  Or else find a new love,

  And good-by to you.

  DEEP IN THE NIGHT

  DEEP in the night the cry of a swallow,

  Under the stars he flew,

  Keen as pain was his call to follow

  Over the world to you.

  Love in my heart is a cry forever

  Lost as the swallow’s flight,

  Seeking for you and never, never

  Stilled by the stars at night.

  THE INDIA WHARF

  HERE in the velvet stillness

  The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon,

  Sleeping in starlight. . . .

  A year ago we walked in the jangling city

  Together . . . . forgetful.

  One by one we crossed the avenues,

  Rivers of light, roaring in tumult,

  And came to the narrow, knotted streets.

  Thru the tense crowd

  We went aloof, ecstatic, walking in wonder,

  Unconscious of our motion.

  Forever the foreign people with dark, deep-seeing eyes

  Passed us and passed.

  Lights and foreign words and foreign faces,

  I forgot them all;

  I only felt alive, defiant of all death and sorrow,

  Sure and elated.

  That was the gift you gave me. . . .

  The streets grew still more tangled,

  And led at last to water black and glossy,

  Flecked here and there with lights, faint and far off.

  There on a shabby building was a sign

  “The India Wharf “ . . . and we turned back.

  I always felt we could have taken ship

  And crossed the bright green seas

  To dreaming cities set on sacred streams

  And palaces

  Of ivory and scarlet.

  I SHALL NOT CARE

  WHEN I am dead and over me bright April

  Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,

  Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,

  I shall not care.

  I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful

  When rain bends down the bough,

  And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted

  Than you are now.

  DESERT POOLS

  I LOVE too much; I am a river

  Surging with spring that seeks the sea,

  I am too generous a giver,

  Love will not stoop to drink of me.

  His feet will turn to desert places

  Shadowless, reft of rain and dew,

  Where stars stare down with sharpened faces

  From heavens pitilessly blue.

  And there at midnight sick with faring,

  He will stoop down in his desire

  To slake the thirst grown past all bearing

  In stagnant water keen as fire.

  LONGING

  I AM not sorry for my soul

  That it must go unsatisfied,

  For it can live a thousand times,

  Eternity is deep and wide.

  I am not sorry for my soul,

  But oh, my body that must go

  Back to a little drift of dust

  Without the joy it longed to know.

  PITY

  THEY never saw my lover’s face,

  They only know our love was brief,

  Wearing awhile a windy grace

  And passing like an autumn leaf.

  They wonder why I do not weep,

  They think it strange that I can sing,

  They say, “Her love was scarcely deep

  Since it has left so slight a sting.”

  They never saw my love, nor knew

  That in my heart’s most secret place

  I pity them as angels do

  Men who have never seen God’s face.

  AFTER PARTING

  OH I have sown my love so wide

  That he will find it everywhere;

  It will awake him in the night,

  It will enfold him in the air.

  I set my shadow in his sight

  And I have winged it with desire,

  That it may be a cloud by day

  And in the night a shaft of fire.

  ENOUGH

  IT is enough for me by day

  To walk the same bright earth with him;

  Enough that over us by night

  The same great roof of stars is dim.

  I have no care to bind the wind

  Or set a fetter on the sea —

  It is enough to feel his love

  Blow by like music over me.

  ALCHEMY

  I LIFT my heart as spring lifts up

  A yellow daisy to the rain;

  My heart will be a lovely cup

  Altho’ it holds but pain.

  For I shall learn from flower and leaf

  That color every drop they hold,

  To change the lifeless wine of grief

  To living gold.

  FEBRUARY

&n
bsp; THEY spoke of him I love

  With cruel words and gay;

  My lips kept silent guard

  On all I could not say.

  I heard, and down the street

  The lonely trees in the square

  Stood in the winter wind

  Patient and bare.

  I heard . . . oh voiceless trees

  Under the wind, I knew

  The eager terrible spring

  Hidden in 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.

  MAY NIGHT

  THE spring is fresh and fearless

  And every leaf is new,

  The world is brimmed with moonlight,

  The lilac brimmed with dew.

  Here in the moving shadows

  I catch my breath and sing —

  My heart is fresh and fearless

  And over-brimmed with spring.

  DUSK IN JUNE

  EVENING, and all the birds

  In a chorus of shimmering sound

  Are easing their hearts of joy

  For miles around.

  The air is blue and sweet,

  The few first stars are white, —

  Oh let me like the birds

  Sing before night.

  LOVE-FREE

  I AM free of love as a bird flying south in the autumn,

  Swift and intent, asking no joy from another,

  Glad to forget all of the passion of April

  Ere it was love-free.

  I am free of love, and I listen to music lightly,

  But if he returned, if he should look at me deeply,

  I should awake, I should awake and remember

  I am my lover’s.