Sara Teasdale

Sara Teasdale was born August 8, 1884, at St. Louis, Missouri, and educated there. After leaving school, she traveled in Europe and the Near East. In 1914, she married Ernst B. Filsinger, who has written several books on foreign trade, and moved to New York City in 1916.

Her first book was a slight volume, Sonnets to Duse (1907), giving little promise of the rich lyricism which was to follow. Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911) contains the first hints of that delicate craftsmanship and authentic loveliness which this poet has brought to such a high pitch. The six monologues which open the volume are splendid delineations written in a blank verse that is as musical as many of her lyrics. At times it suffers from too conscious a cleverness; the dexterity with which Miss Teasdale turns a phrase or twists her last line is frequently too obtrusive to be wholly enjoyable.

Rivers to the Sea (1915) emphasizes this epigrammatic skill, but a greater restraint is here, a warmer spontaneity. The new collection contains at least a dozen unforgettable snatches, lyrics in which the words seem to fall into place without art or effort. Seldom employing metaphor or striking imagery, almost bare of ornament, these poems have the sheer magic of triumphant song. Theirs is an artlessness that is more than an art.

Love Songs (1917) is a collection of Miss Teasdale’s previous melodies for the viola d’amore together with several new tunes. The new poems emphasize the way in which this poet achieves a direct enchantment without verbal subtleties. They also emphasize 294their superiority to the earlier love lyrics that were written in a mood of literary romance, of artificial moonlit roses, languishing lutes, balconies, passionate guitars—a mood that was not so much erotic as Pierrotic.

Flame and Shadow (1920) is by far the best of her books. Here the beauty is fuller and deeper; an almost mystic radiance plays from these starry verses. Technically, also, this volume marks Miss Teasdale’s greatest advance. The words are chosen with a keener sense of their actual as well as their musical values; the rhythms are much more subtle and varied; the line moves with a greater naturalness. Beneath the symbolism of poems like “Water Lilies” and “The Long Hill,” one is conscious of a finer artistry, a more flexible speech that is all the lovelier for its slight (and logical) irregularities.

Besides her own books, Miss Teasdale has compiled an anthology, The Answering Voice (1917), comprising one hundred love lyrics by women.

NIGHT SONG AT AMALFI^[46]

I asked the heaven of stars

What I should give my love—

It answered me with silence,

Silence above.

I asked the darkened sea

Down where the fishermen go—

It answered me with silence,

Silence below.

295Oh, I could give him weeping,

Or I could give him song—

But how can I give silence

My whole life long?

SPRING NIGHT^[47]

The park is filled with night and fog,

The veils are drawn about the world,

The drowsy lights along the paths

Are dim and pearled.

Gold and gleaming the empty streets,

Gold and gleaming the misty lake,

The mirrored lights like sunken swords,

Glimmer and shake.

Oh, is it not enough to be

Here with this beauty over me?

My throat should ache with praise, and I

Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.

O beauty, are you not enough?

Why am I crying after love

With youth, a singing voice, and eyes

To take earth’s wonder with surprise?

Why have I put off my pride,

Why am I unsatisfied,—

I, for whom the pensive night

Binds her cloudy hair with light,—

296I, for whom all beauty burns

Like incense in a million urns?

O beauty, are you not enough?

Why am I crying after love?

I SHALL NOT CARE^[48]

When I am dead and over me bright April

Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,

Though 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.

THE LONG HILL^[49]

I must have passed the crest a while ago

And now I am going down—

Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know,

But the brambles were always catching the hem of my gown.

297All the morning I thought how proud I should be

To stand there straight as a queen,

Wrapped in the wind and the sun with the world under me—

But the air was dull, there was little I could have seen.

It was nearly level along the beaten track

And the brambles caught in my gown—

But it’s no use now to think of turning back,

The rest of the way will be only going down.

WATER LILIES^[50]

If you have forgotten water-lilies floating

On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,

If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance,

Then you can return and not be afraid.

But if you remember, then turn away forever

To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart,

There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies,

And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your heart.

298

TIRED

If I shall make no poems any more,

There will be rest, at least, so let it be,

Time to look up at golden stars and listen

To the long mellow thunder of the sea.

The year will turn for me, I shall delight in

All animals, and some of my own kind;

Sharing with no one but myself the frosty

And half ironic musings of my mind.