Complete Works of Sara Teasdale Read online

SUMMER NIGHT, RIVERSIDE

  IN the wild soft summer darkness

  How many and many a night we two together

  Sat in the park and watched the Hudson

  Wearing her lights like golden spangles

  Glinting on black satin.

  The rail along the curving pathway

  Was low in a happy place to let us cross,

  And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom

  Sheltered us

  While your kisses and the flowers,

  Falling, falling,

  Tangled my hair. . . .

  The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.

  And now, far off

  In the fragrant darkness

  The tree is tremulous again with bloom

  For June comes back.

  To-night what girl

  When she goes home,

  Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair

  This year’s blossoms, clinging in its coils ?

  IN A SUBWAY STATION

  AFTER a year I came again to the place;

  The tireless lights and the reverberation,

  The angry thunder of trains that burrow the ground,

  The hunted, hurrying people were still the same —

  But oh, another man beside me and not you!

  Another voice and other eyes in mine!

  And suddenly I turned and saw again

  The gleaming curve of tracks, the bridge above —

  They were burned deep into my heart before,

  The night I watched them to avoid your eyes,

  When you were saying, “Oh, look up at me!”

  When you were saying, “Will you never love me?”

  And when I answered with a lie. Oh then

  You dropped your eyes. I felt your utter pain.

  I would have died to say the truth to you.

  After a year I came again to the place —

  The hunted hurrying people were still the same….

  AFTER LOVE

  THERE is no magic when we meet,

  We speak as other people do,

  You work no miracle for me

  Nor I for you.

  You were the wind and I the sea —

  There is no splendor any more,

  I have grown listless as the pool

  Beside the shore.

  But tho’ the pool is safe from storm

  And from the tide has found surcease,

  It grows more bitter than the sea,

  For all its peace.

  DOORYARD ROSES

  I HAVE come the selfsame path

  To the selfsame door,

  Years have left the roses there

  Burning as before.

  While I watch them in the wind

  Quick the hot tears start —

  Strange so frail a flame outlasts

  Fire in the heart.

  A PRAYER

  UNTIL I lose my soul and lie

  Blind to the beauty of the earth,

  Deaf tho’ a lyric wind goes by,

  Dumb in a storm of mirth;

  Until my heart is quenched at length

  And I have left the land of men,

  Oh let me love with all my strength

  Careless if I am loved again.

  PART II.

  INDIAN SUMMER

  LYRIC night of the lingering Indian Summer,

  Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,

  Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,

  Ceaseless, insistent.

  The grasshopper’s horn, and far off, high in the maples

  The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence,

  Under a moon waning and worn and broken,

  Tired with summer.

  Let me remember you, voices of little insects,

  Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,

  Let me remember you, soon will the winter be on us,

  Snow-hushed and heartless.

  Over my soul murmur your mute benediction

  While I gaze, oh fields that rest after harvest,

  As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,

  Lest they forget them.

  THE SEA WIND

  I AM a pool in a peaceful place,

  I greet the great sky face to face,

  I know the stars and the stately moon

  And the wind that runs with rippling shoon —

  But why does it always bring to me

  The far-off, beautiful sound of the sea?

  The marsh-grass weaves me a wall of green,

  But the wind comes whispering in between,

  In the dead of night when the sky is deep

  The wind comes waking me out of sleep —

  Why does it always bring to me

  The far-off, terrible call of the sea?

  THE CLOUD

  I AM a cloud in the heaven’s height,

  The stars are lit for my delight,

  Tireless and changeful, swift and free,

  I cast my shadow on hill and sea —

  But why do the pines on the mountain’s crest

  Call to me always, “Rest, rest”?

  I throw my mantle over the moon

  And I blind the sun on his throne at noon,

  Nothing can tame me, nothing can bind,

  I am a child of the heartless wind —

  But oh the pines on the mountain’s crest

  Whispering always, “Rest, rest.”

  THE POOR HOUSE

  HOPE went by and Peace went by

  And would not enter in;

  Youth went by and Health went by

  And Love that is their kin.

  Those within the house shed tears

  On their bitter bread;

  Some were old and some were mad,

  And some were sick a-bed.

  Gray Death saw the wretched house

  And even he passed by —

  “They have never lived,” he said,

  “They can wait to die.”

  NEW YEAR’S DAWN — BROADWAY

  WHEN the horns wear thin

  And the noise, like a garment outworn,

  Falls from the night,

  The tattered and shivering night,

  That thinks she is gay;

  When the patient silence comes back,

  And retires,

  And returns,

  Rebuffed by a ribald song,

  Wounded by vehement cries,

  Fleeing again to the stars —

  Ashamed of her sister the night;

  Oh, then they steal home,

  The blinded, the pitiful ones

  With their gew-gaws still in their hands,

  Reeling with odorous breath

  And thick, coarse words on their tongues.

  They get them to bed, somehow,

  And sleep the forgiving,

  Comes thru the scattering tumult

  And closes their eyes.

  The stars sink down ashamed

  And the dawn awakes,

  Like a youth who steals from a brothel,

  Dizzy and sick.

  THE STAR

  A WHITE star born in the evening glow

  Looked to the round green world below,

  And saw a pool in a wooded place

  That held like a jewel her mirrored face.

  She said to the pool: “Oh, wondrous deep,

  I love you, I give you my light to keep.

  Oh, more profound than the moving sea

  That never has shown myself to me!

  Oh, fathomless as the sky is far,

  Hold forever your tremulous star!”

  But out of the woods as night grew cool

  A brown pig came to the little pool;

  It grunted and splashed and waded in

  And the deepest place but reached its chin.

  The water gurgled with tender glee

  And the mud churned up in it turbidl
y.

  The star grew pale and hid her face

  In a bit of floating cloud like lace.

  DOCTORS

  EVERY night I lie awake

  And every day I lie abed

  And hear the doctors, Pain and Death,

  Conferring at my head.

  They speak in scientific tones,

  Professional and low —

  One argues for a speedy cure,

  The other, sure and slow.

  To one so humble as myself

  It should be matter for some pride

  To have such noted fellows here,

  Conferring at my side.

  .

  THE INN OF EARTH

  I CAME to the crowded Inn of Earth,

  And called for a cup of wine,

  But the Host went by with averted eye

  From a thirst as keen as mine.

  Then I sat down with weariness

  And asked a bit of bread,

  But the Host went by with averted eye

  And never a word he said.

  While always from the outer night

  The waiting souls came in

  With stifled cries of sharp surprise

  At all the light and din.

  “Then give me a bed to sleep,” I said,

  “For midnight comes apace” —

  But the Host went by with averted eye

  And I never saw his face.

  “Since there is neither food nor rest,

  I go where I fared before” —

  But the Host went by with averted eye

  And barred the outer door.

  IN THE CARPENTER’S SHOP

  MARY sat in the corner dreaming,

  Dim was the room and low,

  While in the dusk, the saw went screaming

  To and fro.

  Jesus and Joseph toiled together,

  Mary was watching them,

  Thinking of kings in the wintry weather

  At Bethlehem.

  Mary sat in the corner thinking,

  Jesus had grown a man;

  One by one her hopes were sinking

  As the years ran.

  Jesus and Joseph toiled together,

  Mary’s thoughts were far —

  Angels sang in the wintry weather

  Under a star.

  Mary sat in the corner weeping,

  Bitter and hot her tears —

  Little faith were the angels keeping

  All the years.

  THE CARPENTER’S SON

  THE summer dawn came over-soon,

  The earth was like hot iron at noon

  In Nazareth;

  There fell no rain to ease the heat,

  And dusk drew on with tired feet

  And stifled breath.

  The shop was low and hot and square,

  And fresh-cut wood made sharp the air,

  While all day long

  The saw went tearing thru the oak

  That moaned as tho’ the tree’s heart broke

  Beneath its wrong.

  The narrow street was full of cries,

  Of bickering and snarling lies

  In many keys —

  The tongues of Egypt and of Rome

  And lands beyond the shifting foam

  Of windy seas.

  Sometimes a ruler riding fast

  Scattered the dark crowds as he passed,

  And drove them close

  In doorways, drawing broken breath

  Lest they be trampled to their death

  Where the dust rose.

  There in the gathering night and noise

  A group of Galilean boys

  Crowding to see

  Gray Joseph toiling with his son,

  Saw Jesus, when the task was done,

  Turn wearily.

  He passed them by with hurried tread

  Silently, nor raised his head,

  He who looked up

  Drinking all beauty from his birth

  Out of the heaven and the earth

  As from a cup.

  And Mary, who was growing old,

  Knew that the pottage would be cold

  When he returned;

  He hungered only for the night,

  And westward, bending sharp and bright,

  The thin moon burned.

  He reached the open western gate

  Where whining halt and leper wait,

  And came at last

  To the blue desert, where the deep

  Great seas of twilight lay asleep,

  Windless and vast.

  With shining eyes the stars awoke,

  The dew lay heavy on his cloak,

  The world was dim;

  And in the stillness he could hear

  His secret thoughts draw very near

  And call to him.

  Faint voices lifted shrill with pain

  And multitudinous as rain;

  From all the lands

  And all the villages thereof

  Men crying for the gift of love

  With outstretched hands.

  Voices that called with ceaseless crying,

  The broken and the blind, the dying,

  And those grown dumb

  Beneath oppression, and he heard

  Upon their lips a single word,

  “Come!”

  Their cries engulfed him like the night,

  The moon put out her placid light

  And black and low

  Nearer the heavy thunder drew,

  Hushing the voices . . . yet he knew

  That he would go.

  A quick-spun thread of lightning burns,

  And for a flash the day returns —

  He only hears

  Joseph, an old man bent and white

  Toiling alone from morn till night

  Thru all the years.

  Swift clouds make all the heavens blind,

  A storm is running on the wind —

  He only sees

  How Mary will stretch out her hands

  Sobbing, who never understands

  Voices like these.

  THE MOTHER OF A POET

  SHE is too kind, I think, for mortal things,

  Too gentle for the gusty ways of earth;

  God gave to her a shy and silver mirth,

  And made her soul as clear

  And softly singing as an orchard spring’s

  In sheltered hollows all the sunny year —

  A spring that thru the leaning grass looks up

  And holds all heaven in its clarid cup,

  Mirror to holy meadows high and blue

  With stars like drops of dew.

  I love to think that never tears at night

  Have made her eyes less bright;

  That all her girlhood thru

  Never a cry of love made over-tense

  Her voice’s innocence;

  That in her hands have lain,

  Flowers beaten by the rain,

  And little birds before they learned to sing

  Drowned in the sudden ecstasy of spring.

  I love to think that with a wistful wonder

  She held her baby warm against her breast;

  That never any fear awoke whereunder

  She shuddered at her gift, or trembled lest

  Thru the great doors of birth

  Here to a windy earth

  She lured from heaven a half-unwilling guest.

  She caught and kept his first vague flickering smile,

  The faint upleaping of his spirit’s fire;

  And for a long sweet while

  In her was all he asked of earth or heaven —

  But in the end how far,

  Past every shaken star,

  Should leap at last that arrow-like desire,

  His full-grown manhood’s keen

  Ardor toward the unseen

  Dark mystery beyond the Pleiads seven.

  And in her heart she heard

  His firs
t dim-spoken word —

  She only of them all could understand,

  Flushing to feel at last

  The silence over-past,

  Thrilling as tho’ her hand had touched God’s hand.

  But in the end how many words

  Winged on a flight she could not follow,

  Farther than skyward lark or swallow,

  His lips should free to lands she never knew;

  Braver than white sea-faring birds

  With a fearless melody,

  Flying over a shining sea,

  A star-white song between the blue and blue.

  Oh I have seen a lake as clear and fair

  As it were molten air,

  Lifting a lily upward to the sun.

  How should the water know the glowing heart

  That ever to the heaven lifts its fire,

  A golden and unchangeable desire?

  The water only knows

  The faint and rosy glows

  Of under-petals, opening apart.

  Yet in the soul of earth,

  Deep in the primal ground,

  Its searching roots are wound,

  And centuries have struggled toward its birth.

  So, in the man who sings,

  All of the voiceless horde

  From the cold dawn of things

  Have their reward;

  All in whose pulses ran

  Blood that is his at last,

  From the first stooping man

  Far in the winnowed past.

  Out of the tumult of their love and mating

  Each one created, seeing life was good —

  Dumb, till at last the song that they were waiting

  Breaks like brave April thru a wintry wood.

  RIVERS TO THE SEA

  But what of her whose heart is troubled by it,

  The mother who would soothe and set him free,

  Fearing the song’s storm-shaken ecstasy —

  Oh, as the moon that has no power to quiet

  The strong wind-driven sea.

  .

  IN MEMORIAM F. O. S.

  You go a long and lovely journey,

  For all the stars, like burning dew,

  Are luminous and luring footprints

  Of souls adventurous as you.

  Oh, if you lived on earth elated,

  How is it now that you can run

  Free of the weight of flesh and faring

  Far past the birthplace of the sun?

  TWILIGHT

  THE stately tragedy of dusk

  Drew to its perfect close,