SARA TEASDALE (1884-1933)
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Sara Teasdale contributed some sonnets to the privately printed literary monthly, the Wheel. Her first book, Sonnets to Duse, and Other Poems (1907), was followed by Helen of Troy, and Other Poems (1911), and Rivers to the Sea (1915). Teasdale married a businessman, whom she later divorced in 1929, and moved to New York. In 1918, Teasdale won both the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the annual Poetry Society of America prize for Love Songs (1917). She also edited an anthology of poems for children and another composed of love poems written by women. Her later books such as Flame and Shadow (1920) and Dark of the Moon (1926) are enriched with more maturity and passion than her earlier works. While working on a biography of English poet Christina Rossetti, Teasdale fell ill with pneumonia, overdosed on barbiturates and died in January, 1933.
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 a 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.
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.
The Kiss
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,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.
I Shall Not Care
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 Wind
A tall tree talking with the wind
Leans as he leaned to me—
But oh the wind waits where she will,
The wind is free.
I am a woman, I am weak,
And custom leads me as one blind,
Only my songs go where they will
Free as the wind.
The Answer
When I go back to earth
And all my joyous body
Puts off the red and white
That once had been so proud,
If men should pass above
With false and feeble pity,
My dust will find a voice
To answer them aloud:
“Be still, I am content,
Take back your poor compassion,
Joy was a flame in me
Too steady to destroy;
Lithe as a bending reed
Loving the storm that sways her—
I found more joy in sorrow
Than you could find in joy.”
Appraisal
Never think she loves him wholly,
Never believe her love is blind,
All his faults are locked securely
In a closet of her mind;
All his indecisions folded
Like old flags that time has faded,
Limp and streaked with rain,
And his cautiousness like garments
Frayed and thin, with many a stain—
Let them be, oh let them be,
There is treasure to outweigh them,
His proud will that sharply stirred,
Climbs as surely as the tide,
Senses strained too taut to sleep,
Gentleness to beast and bird,
Humor flickering hushed and wide
As the moon on moving water,
And a tenderness too deep
To be gathered in a word.
The Solitary
My heart has grown rich with the passing of years,
I have less need now than when I was young
To share myself with every comer
Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.
It is one to me that they come or go
If I have myself and the drive of my will,
And strength to climb on a summer night
And watch the stars swarm over the hill.
Let them think I love them more than I do,
Let them think I care, though I go alone;
If it lifts their pride, what is it to me
Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone.
Sappho
The twilight’s inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moonwise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower face
Here on my heart, but still the night is kind
And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.
Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
Along the surges creeping up the shore
When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,
And running, running, till the night was black,
Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand
And quiver with the winds from off the sea?
Ah, quietly the shingle waits the tides
Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me
Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.
I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands
And cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet,
From whom the sea is bitterer than death.
Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more
To thee, God’s daughter, powerful as God,
It is that thou hast made my life too sweet
To hold the added sweetness of a song.
There is a quiet at the heart of love,
And I have pierced the pain and come to peace.
I hold my peace, my Cleïs, on my heart;
And softer than a little wild bird’s wing
Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth.
Ah, never any more when spring like fire
Will flicker in the newly opened leaves,
Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude
Beyond the lure of light Alcæus’ lyre,
Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna’s voice.
Ah, never with a throat that aches with song,
Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring,
Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love
The quiver and the crying of my heart.
Still I remember how I strove to flee
The love-note of the birds, and bowed my head
To hurry faster, but upon the ground
I saw two winged shadows side by side,
And all the world’s spring passion stifled me.
Ah, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might,
No lonely place where thou hast never trod,
No desert thou hast left uncarpeted
With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet.
In many guises didst thou come to me;
I saw thee by the maidens while they danced,
Phaon allured me with a look of thine,
In Anactoria I knew thy grace,
I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes;
But never wholly, soul and body mine,
Didst thou bid any love me as I loved.
Now I have found the peace that fled from me;
Close, close, against my heart I hold my world.
Ah, Love that made my life a lyric cry,
Ah, Love that tuned my lips to lyres of thine,
I taught the world thy music, now alone
I sing for one who falls asleep to hear.
ELINOR WYLIE (1885-1928)
Born in Somerville, New Jersey, Elinor Wylie attended private schools in Washington, D.C., where her father was assistant U.S. attorney general. She caused a social upheaval in 1910 when she left her first husband for Horace Wylie, a lawyer seventeen years her senior. In 1912, Wylie’s mother published an anonymous volume of her daughter’s poems. Appearing under her own name, Nets to Catch the Wind (1921) was praised by both the critics and the public. Following her book’s success, Wylie moved to New York City and hobnobbed with the literary society there. She continued to write poetry for magazines and married her third husband, William Rose Benét, in 1923. Her subsequent books include: Black Armour (1923), Jennifer Lorn (1923), one of four novels, and Angels and Earthly Creatures (1929). Her Collected Poems (1932) and Collected Prose (1933), both edited by Benét, were published posthumously.
Beauty
Say not of Beauty she is good,
Or aught but beautiful,
Or sleek to doves’ wings of the wood
Her wild wings of a gull.
Call her not wicked; that word’s touch
Consumes her like a curse;
But love her not too much, too much,
For that is even worse.
O, she is neither good nor bad,
But innocent and wild!
Enshrine her and she dies, who had
The hard heart of a child.
The Eagle and the Mole
Avoid the reeking herd,
Shun the polluted flock,
Live like that stoic bird,
The eagle of the rock.
The huddled warmth of crowds
Begets and fosters hate;
He keeps, above the clouds,
His cliff inviolate.
When flocks are folded warm,
And herds to shelter run,
He sails above the storm,
He stares into the sun,
If in the eagle’s track
Your sinews cannot leap,
Avoid the lathered pack,
Turn from the steaming sheep.
If you would keep your soul
From spotted sight or sound,
Live like the velvet mole;
Go burrow underground.
And there hold intercourse
With roots of trees and stones,
With rivers at their source,
And disembodied bones.
Velvet Shoes
Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.
I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as a white cow’s milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.
We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.
We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.
Let No Charitable Hope
Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope:
I am in nature none of these.
I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
The little nourishment I get.
In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file;
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.
Pretty Words
Poets make pets of pretty, docile words:
I love smooth words, like gold-enameled fish
Which circle slowly with a silken swish,
And tender ones, like downy-feathered birds:
Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds,
Come to my hand, and playful if I wish,
Or purring softly at a silver dish,
Blue Persian kittens, fed on cream and curds.
I love bright words, words up and singing early;
Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;
Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;
I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,
Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees,
Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.
HAZEL HALL (1886-1924)
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Hazel Hall began writing verse when she was thirty years old. Raised in Portland, Oregon, she was paralyzed at the age of twelve and confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of her life. Hall’s poems and her needlework became her livelihood. She published Curtains (1922), Walkers (1923), and Cry of Time (1928, published posthumously).
White Branches
I had forgotten the gesture of branches
Suddenly white,
And I had forgotten the fragrance of blossoms
Filling a room at night.
In remembering the curve of branches
Who beckoned me in vain,
Remembering dark rooms of coolness
Where fragrance was like pain,
I have forgotten all else; there is nothing
That signifies—
There is only the brush of branch and white breath
Against my lips and eyes.
Instruction
My hands that guide a needle
In their turn are led
Relentlessly and deftly,
As a needle leads a thread.
Other hands are teaching
My needle; when I sew
I feel the cool, thin fingers
Of hands I do not know.
They urge my needle onward,
They smooth my seams, until
The worry of my stitches
Smothers in their skill.
All the tired women,
Who sewed their lives away,
Speak in my deft fingers
As I sew today.
HILDA DOOLITTLE (1886—1961)
While attending Bryn Mawr College, Hilda Doolittle met fellow poets Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams. In 1911, Doolittle traveled to Europe and eventually made her home there. Ezra Pound, pivotal in the development of Imagism, encouraged her to submit her poetry to Harriet Monroe’s magazine, Poetry. Her early poems were published with the pseudonym “H. D.” in periodicals such as London’s The Egoist, edited by Richard Aldington, who became her husband in 1913. Doolittle emerged as one of the newer Imagist poets with her first volume of poems, Sea Garden (1916). Her other books include: Hymen (1921), Heliodora and Other Poems (1924), Red Roses for Bronze (1931), and various prose works, including four novels. In 1960, Doolittle received the Award of Merit Medal for poetry.
Oread
Whirl up, sea—
whirl your pointed pines,
splash your great pines
on our rocks,
hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.
Sea Poppies
Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,
treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:
your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.
Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?
Sheltered Garden
I have had enough.
I gasp for breath.
Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest—
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.
I have had enough—
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
herbs, sweet-cress.
O for some sharp swish of a branch—
there is no scent of resin
in this place,
no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent—
only border on border of scented pinks.
Great Poems by American Women Page 19