A few months back, this column sought to remind people just how fine a poet Christina Rossetti was. We’d like to do it again, this time for an American poet who has sometimes slipped out of sight. Her name: Sara Teasdale (1884-1933). Her standing in our literary history: right up there with Amy Lowell and Edna St. Vincent Millay, just a shade behind Emily Dickinson. She was inspired by the poetry of Rossetti and in 1918 won the Columbia Poetry Prize, later to be called the Pulitzer.
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Here is a great poem, perhaps her most famous. Written in 1918, it is her take on World War One where she elevates the power of Nature over the destructive power of mankind.
THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
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Sara Teasdale was born in St. Louis, Missouri, which, incidentally, might lay claim to being the Poetry Capital of America. Also born there were T.S. Eliot, Maya Angelou, Eugene Field, and Marianne Moore. Though a Midwesterner by origin, Teasdale spent many of her most creative years in New York City, living first on Central Park West and then at One Fifth Avenue where she could observe many of the goings-on in Manhattan. Here are poems about Union Square and then the Metropolitan Museum, unrequited love in the first case and lightly requited in the second.
UNION SQUARE
With the man I love who loves me not,
I walked in the street-lamps’ flare;
We watched the world go home that night
In a flood through Union Square.
I leaned to catch the words he said
That were light as a snowflake falling;
Ah well that he never leaned to hear
The words my heart was calling.
And on we walked and on we walked
Past the fiery lights of the picture shows —
Where the girls with thirsty eyes go by
On the errand each man knows.
And on we walked and on we walked,
At the door at last we said good-bye;
I knew by his smile he had not heard
My heart’s unuttered cry.
With the man I love who loves me not
I walked in the street-lamps’ flare —
But oh, the girls who ask for love
In the lights of Union Square.
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IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
Inside the tiny Pantheon
We stood together silently,
Leaving the restless crowds awhile,
As ships find shelter from the sea.
The ancient centuries came back
To cover us a moment’s space,
And through the dome the light was glad
Because it shone upon your face.
Ah, not from Rome but farther still
Beyond sun-smitten Salamis,
The moment took us, till you learned
To find the present with a kiss.
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That’s one view about a kiss. Here’s another.
I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.
For though I know he loves me,
Tonight my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.
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The shape and formatting of Teasdale’s poetry tends to be classic and charmingly unsophisticated. But the subject matter is ever romantic and offers a woman’s perspective on life and love.
JEWELS
If I should see your eyes again,
I know how far their look would go —
Back to a morning in the park
With sapphire shadows on the snow.
Or back to oak trees in the spring
When you unloosed my hair and kissed
The head that lay against your knees
In the leaf shadow’s amethyst.
And still another shining place
We would remember — how the dun
Wild mountain held us on its crest
One diamond morning white with sun.
But I will turn my eyes from you
As women turn to put away
The jewels they have worn at night
And cannot wear in sober day.
Teasdale was not academic or pedantic, but she enjoyed offering gentle advice.
BARTER
Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children’s faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup.
Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like the curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
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And this charming piece is often quoted.
ADVICE TO A GIRL
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed
As Teasdale sees it, there is an inevitability to aging, but there is always a hope for love in autumn before winter closes in.
LOVE IN AUTUMN
I sought among the drifting leaves,
The golden leaves that once were green,
To see if Love were hiding there
And peeping out between.
For thro’ the silver showers of May
And thro’ the summer’s heavy heat,
In vain I sought his golden head
And light, fast-flying feet.
Perhaps when all the world is bare
And cruel winter holds the land,
The Love that finds no place to hide
Will run and catch my hand.
I shall not care to have him then,
I shall be bitter and a-cold —
It grows too late for frolicking
When all the world is old.
Then little hiding Love, come forth,
Come forth before the autumn goes,
And let us seek thro’ ruined paths
The garden’s last red rose.
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The subject of our previous column, Vachel Lindsay, was passionately in love with Sara Teasdale, and she felt a deep personal connection with him. However, they couldn’t quite put things together and ended marrying other people. A mutual flame remained alight, but when Teasdale divorced and was free, Lindsay had already established a family. In what would seem a cosmic kind of bond, Lindsay committed suicide in 1931 and two years later, Teasdale intentionally and lethally overdosed on barbiturates. She left $5,000 to Lindsay’s six-year-old daughter.
Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.
We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.
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VIDEO: Somehow, Sara Teasdale’s brief, lyric love poems remind me of similar verse in the First Elizabethan Period, with writers like the Sirs Walter Raleigh and Philip Sidney. We present five of Teasdale’s best:
SPRING RAIN
AFTER PARTING
FAULT
I AM NOT YOURS
ENOUGH
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: SARA TEASDALE
