Sara Teasdale: A Winter Night

My window-pane is starred with frost,

The world is bitter cold to-night,

The moon is cruel and the wind

is like a two-edged sword to smite.

God pity all the homeless ones, 

The beggars pacing to and fro.

God pity all the poor to-night

who walk the lamp-lit streets of snow.

My room is like a bit of June,

Warm and close-curtained fold on fold,

But somewhere, like a homeless child,

My heart is crying in the cold.

Sara Teasdale: Understanding

I understood the rest too well,

And all their thoughts have come to be

Clear as grey sea-weed in the swell

Of a sunny shallow sea.

But you I never understood,

Your spirit's secret hides like gold

Sunk in a Spanish galleon

Ages ago in waters cold.

Sara Teasdale: What Do I Care

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.

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.

Sara Teasdale: 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.

Sara Teasdale: 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.

Sara Teasdale: Faults

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.

Sara Teasdale: The Flight

Look back with longing eyes and know that I will follow,
Lift me up in your love as a light wind lifts a swallow,
Let our flight be far in sun or blowing rain--
But what if I heard my first love calling me again?

Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam,
Take me far away to the hills that hide your home;
Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door--
But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?

Sarah Teasdale: I Thought of You

I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.

Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea --
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.

Sarah Teasdale: 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.

Sara Teasdale: 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 goodbye to you.

Sara Teasdale: A Prayer

Until I lose my soul and lie
Blind to the beauty of the earth,
Deaf though a shouting 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.

Sara Teasdale: The Look

 Strephon kissed me in the spring,
   Robin in the fall,
 But Colin only looked at me
   And never kissed at all.

 Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
   Robin's lost in play,
 But the kiss in Colin's eyes
   Haunts me night and day.

Sara Teasdale: After Love

There is no magic any more,
We meet 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 though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.

Sara Teasdale: New Love and Old

In my heart the old love
Struggled with the new;
It was ghostly waking
All night thru.
Dear things, kind things,
That my old love said,
Ranged themselves reproachfully
Round my bed.
But I could not heed them,
For I seemed to see

The eyes of my new love
Fixed on me.
Old love, old love,
How can I be true?
Shall I be faithless to myself
Or to you?

Sara Teasdale: I am not yours

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.
You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.
Oh plunge me deep in love—put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,

Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in the rushing wind.