The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale

 


Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems (1907)

1. To Eleonora Duse

(a) Oh beauty that is filled so full of tears, Where every passing anguish left its trace, I pray you grant to me this depth of grace: That I may see before it disappears, Blown through the gateway of our hopes and fears To death's inevitable last embrace, The glory and the sadness of your face, Its longing unappeased through all the years. No bitterness beneath your sorrow clings; Within the wild dark falling of your hair There lies a strength that ever soars and sings; Your mouth's mute weariness is not despair. Perhaps among us craven earth-born things God loves its silence better than a prayer.

2. To a Picture of Eleonora Duse in "The Dead City"

(a) Your face is set against a fervent sky, Before the thirsty hills that sevenfold Return the sun's hot glory, gold on gold, Where Agamemmon and Cassandra lie. Your eyes are blind who light shall never die, And all the tears the closed eyelids hold, And all the longing that the eyes have told, Is gathered in the lips that make no cry. Yea, like a flower within a desert place, Whose petals fold and fade for lack of rain, Are these, your eyes, where joy of sight was slain, And in the silence of your lifted face, The cloud is rent that hides a sleeping race And vanished Grecian beauty lives again.

(b) Calm in the silence by the hand of Pain, Who made more perfect by the gift of Peace, Than if Delight had bid your sorrow cease, And brought the dawn to where the dark has lain, And set a smile upon your lips again; Oh strong and noble! Tho' your woes increase, The gods shall hear no crying for release, Nor see the tremble that your lips restrain. Yet one with all the beauty of the past; A sister to the noblest that we know, The Venus carved in Melos long ago, Yea speaks to her, and at your lightest tone Her lips will part and words will come at last.

4. To a Picture of Eleonora Duse as "Francesca da Rimini"

(a) Oh flower-sweet face and slender flower-like hand! Oh violet whose purple cannot pale, Or forest fragrance ever faint or fail, Or breath and beauty pass among the dead! Yea, very truly has the poet said: No mist of years or might of death avail To darken beauty—brighter thro' the veil We see the glamor of its wings outspread. Oh face embowered and shadowed by thy hair, Some lotus blossom on a darkened stream! If ever I have pictured in a dream My guardian angel, she is like to this; Her eyes know joy, yet sorrow lingers there, And on her lips the shadow of a kiss.

5. The Gift

(a) What can I give you, my lord, my lover, You who have given the world to me, Showed me the light and the joy that cover The wide sweet earth and the restless sea? (b) All that I have are gifts of your giving— If I gave them again you would find them old, And your soul would weary of always living Before the mirror my life would hold. (c) What shall I give you, my lord, my lover? The gift that breaks the heart in me: I bid you awake at dawn and discover I have gone my way and left you free.

6. To Joy

(a) Lo, I am happy, for my eyes have seen Joy glowing here before me, face to face; His wings were arched above me for a space, I kissed his lips, no bitter came between, The air is vibrant where his feet have been, And full of song and color in his place. His wondrous presence sheds about a grace That lifts and hallows all that once was mean. Tho' I may not sorrow for I saw the light, I still shall walk in the valley ways for long, My life is measured by its one great height. Joy holds more grace than pain can ever give, And my glimpse of joy my soul shall live.

7. Roses and Rue

(a) Bring me the roses white and red, And take the laurel leaves away, Yea, wreath the roses round my head That wearies 'neath the crown of bay. (b) "We searched the wintry forest thro' And found no roses anywhere— But we have brought a little rue To twine a circlet for your hair." (c) I would not pluck the rose in May, I wore a laurel crown instead; And when the crown is cast away, The bring me rue—the rose is dead.

8. Faults

(a) They came to tell your faults to me, They named them over one by one; I laughed aloud when they were done, I knew them all so well before,— Oh, they were blind, too blind to see Your faults had made me love you more.

Flame and Shadow (1920)

1. Blue Squills

(a) How many million Aprils came Before I ever knew How white a cherry bough could be, A bed of squills how blue! (b) And many a dancing April When life is done with me, Will lift the blue flame of the flower And the white flame of the tree. (c) Oh burn me with your beauty, then, Oh hurt me, tree and flower, Lest in the end death try to take Even this glistening hour. (d) O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees, O sunlit white and blue, Wound me, that I, through endless sleep, May bear the scar of you.

2. Stars

(a) Alone in the night On a dark hill With pines around me Spicy and still, (b) And a heaven full of stars Over my head, White and topaz And misty red; (c) Myriads with beating Hearts of fire That alone Cannot vex or tire; (d) Up the dome of heaven Like a great hill, I watch them marching Stately and still, (e) And I know that I Am honored to be Witness Of so much majesty.

3. "What Do I Care"

(a) What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring, That my songs do not show me at all? For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire, I am an answer, they are only a call. (b) But what do I care, for love will be over so soon, Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by, For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent, It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.

4. Meadowlarks

(a) In the silver light after a storm, Under dripping boughs of bright new green, I take the low paths to hear the meadowlarks Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen. (b) What have I to fear in life or death Who have known three things: the kiss in the night, The white flying joy when a song is born, And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.

5. Driftwood

(a) My forefathers gave me My spirit's shaken flame, The shape of my hands, the beat of my heart, The letters of my name. (b) But it was my lovers, And not my sleeping sires, Who gave the flame its changeful and iridescent fires; (c) As the driftwood burning Learns its jeweled blaze From the sea's blue splendor Of closed nights and days.

6. "I Have Loved Hours at Sea"

(a) I have loved hours at sea, grey cities, The fragile secret of a flower, Music, the making of a poem That gave me heaven for an hour; (b) First stars above a snowy hill, Voices of people kindly and wise, And the great look of love, long hidden, Found at last in meeting eyes. (c) I have loved much and been loved deeply— Oh when my spirit's fire burns low, Leave me the darkness and the stillness, I shall be tired and glad to go.

7. August Moonrise

(a) The sun was gone, and the moon was coming Over the Connecticut hills; The west was rosy, the east was flushing, And over my head the swallows rushed This way and that, with changeful wills. I heard them twitter and watch them dart Now together and now apart Like dark petals flown from a tree; The maples stood against the west Were black and stately and full of rest, And the hazy orange moon grew up While two hills were darkened fold on fold To a deeper blue than a flower could hold. I forgot the ways of men, For night-scents, herbs, and damp and cool Wakened ecstasy in me On the brink of a shining pool. (b) O beauty of many a cup You have made me drunk and wild Ever since I was a child, But when have I been sure as now That no bitterness can bend And no sorrow wholly bow One who loves you to the end? And though I must give my breath And my laughter all to death, And my eyes through which joy came, And my heart a wavering flame, Still all must leave me and go back Along a blind and fearful track So that you can make anew, Fusing with intenser fire, Something nearer your desire; Of my soul must go alone Through a cold infinity. Or even if it vanish, too, Beauty, I have worshipped you, Let this single hour atone For the theft of all of me.

II. Memories

1. Places

(a) Place I love come back to me like music, Hush me and heal me when I am very tired; I see the oak woods at Saxton's flaming In a flare of crimson by the frost newly fired; And I am thirsty for the spring in the valley As for a kiss ungiven and long desired. (b) I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton, A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees, The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze, And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust With the winter sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees. (c) Violet now, in veil on veil of evening, The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far; A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol In the heart of the hollow where the dark pools are; The primrose has opened her yellow flowers And heaven is lighting star after star. (d) Places I love come back to me like music— Mid-ocean, midnight, the waves buzz drowsily; In the ship's deep churning the eerie phosphorescence Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea, And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed, insistent, At midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me.

2. Old Tunes

(a) As two waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose, Float in the garden when no wind blows, Come to us, go from us, when no one knows; (b) So the old tunes float in my mind, And go from me leaving no trace behind, Like fragrance borne on the hush of the wind. (c) But in the instant the airs remain I know the laughter and the pain Of times that will not come again. (d) I try to catch at many a tune Like petals of light fallen from the moon, Broken and bright on a dark lagoon. (e) But they float away—for who can hold Youth, or perfume or the moon's gold?

3. "Only in Sleep"

(a) Only in sleep I see their faces, Children I played with when I was child, Louise comes back with her brown hair braided, Annie with ringlets warm and wild— (b) Only in sleep Time is forgotten— What may have come to them, who can know? Yet we played—last night as long ago, And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair. (c) The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces, I met their eyes and found them mild— Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder, And for them am I, too, a child?

4. Redbirds

(a) Redbirds, redbirds, Long and long ago, What a honey-call you had In hills I used to know;

7. Lights

(a) When we came home at night and closed the door, Standing together in the shadowy room, Safe in our own hall and the gentle gloom, Glad of familiar wall and chair and floor, (b) Glad to leave far below the clanging city; Looking far downward to the glaring street Gaudy with light, yet tired with many feet In both of us wells up a wordless pity; (c) Men have tried hard to put away the dark; A million lighted windows brilliantly Inlay with squares of gold the winter night, But to us standing here there comes the stark Sense of the lives behind each yellow light, And not one wholly joyous, proud, or free.

8. Doubt

(a) My soul lives in my body's house, And you have both the house and her— But sometimes she is less your own Than a wild, gay adventurer; A restless and eager wraith How can I tell what she will do— Oh, I am sure of my body's faith, But what if my soul broke faith with you?

9. The Lamp

(a) If I can bear your love like a lamp before me, When I go down the long steep Road of Darkness, I shall not fear the everlasting shadows, Nor cry in terror. (b) If I can find our God, then I shall find Him, If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly, Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me, A lamp in darkness.

10. A November Night

(a) There! See the line of lights, A chain of stars down either side the street— Why can't you lift the chain, and give it to me, A necklace for my throat? I'd twist it round And you could play with it. You smile at me As though I were a little dreamy child Behind whose eyes the fairies live—and see,


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