Christmas Carol

THE kings they came from out the south,

All dressed in ermine fine;

They bore Him gold and chrysoprase,

And gifts of precious wine.

The shepherds came from out the north,

Their coats were brown and old;

They brought Him little new-born lambs--

They had not any gold.

The wise men came from out the east,

And they were wrapped in white;

The star that led them all the way

Did glorify the night.

The angels came from heaven high,

And they were clad with wings;

And lo, they brought a joyful song

The host of heaven sings.

The kings they knocked upon the door,

The wise men entered in,

The shepherds followed after them

To hear the song begin.

The angels sang through all the night

Until the rising sun,

But little Jesus fell asleep

Before the song was done.

Sara Teasdale

Song

YOU bound strong sandals on my feet,

You gave me bread and wine,

And sent me under sun and stars,

For all the world was mine.

Oh, take the sandals off my feet,

You know not what you do;

For all my world is in your arms,

My sun and stars are you.

Sara Teasdale

The Wanderer

I SAW the sunset-colored sands,

The Nile, like flowing fire between,

Where Ramses stares forth serene

And ammon's heavy temple stands.

I saw the rocks where long ago,

Above the sea that cries and breaks,

Bright Perseus with Medusa's snakes

Set free the maiden white like snow.

And many skies have covered me,

And many winds have blown me forth,

And I have loved the green, bright north,

And I have loved the cold, sweet sea.

But what to me are north and south,

And what the lire of many lands,

Since you have learned to catch my hands

And lay a kiss upon my mouth.

Sara Teasdale

Less than the cloud to the wind

LESS than the cloud to the wind,

Less than the foam to the sea,

Less than the rose to the storm,

Am I to thee.

More than the star to the night,

More than the rain to the tree,

More than heaven to earth

Art thou to me.

Sara Teasdale

Pierrot

PIERROT stands in the garden,

Beneath a waning moon,

And on his lute he fashions

A fragile silver tune.

Pierrot plays in the garden,

He thinks he plays for me,

But I am quite forgotten

Under the cherry tree.

Pierrot plays in the garden,

And all the roses know,

That Pierrot loves his music,--

But I love Pierrot.

Sara Teasdale

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.

Sara Teasdale

In the Metropolitan Museum

INSIDE the tiny Pantheon

We stood together silently,

Leaving the restless crowsd 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.

Sara Teasdale

Coney Island

WHY did you bring me here?

The sand is white with snow,

Over the wooden domes

The winter sea-winds blow--

There is no shelter near,

Come, let us go.

With foam of icy lace

The sea creeps up the sand,

The wind is like a hand

That strikes us in the face.

Doors that June set a-swing

Are bolted long ago;

We try them uselessly--

Alas there cannot be

For us a second spring;

Come, let us go.

Sara Teasdale

Central Park at Dusk

BUILDINGS above the leafless trees

Loom high as castles in a dream,

While one by one the lamps come out

To thread the twilight with a gleam.

There is no sighn of leaf or bud,

A hush is over everything--

Silent as women wait for love,

The world is waiting for the spring.

Sara Teasdale

For the Anniversary of John Keats' Death

(February 25, 1821)

AT midnight, when the moonlit cypress trees

Have woven round his grave a magic shade,

Still weeping the unfinished hymn he made,

There moves fresh Maia, like a morning breeze

Blown over jonquil beds when warm rains cease.

And stooping where her poet's head is laid,

Selene weeps, while all the tides are stayed,

And swaying seas are darkened into peace.

But they who wake the meadows and the tides

Have hearts too kind to bid him wake from sleep,

Who murmurs sometimes when his dreams are deep,

Startling the Quiet Land where he abides,

And charming still sad-eyed Persephone

With visions of the sunny earth and sea.

Sara Teasdale

To Cleïs

(The daughter of Sappho)

WHEN the dusk was wet with dew,

Cleïs, did the muses nine

Listen in a silent line

While your mother sang to you?

Did they weep or did they smile

When she crooned to still your cries,

She, a muse in human guise

Who forsook her lyre awhile

Did you hear her wild heart beat?

Did the warmth of all the sun

Through your little body run

When she kissed your hands and feet?

Did your fingers, babywise,

Touch her face and touch her hair

Did you think your mother fair,

Could you bear her burning eyes?

Are the songs that soothed your fears

Vanished like a vanished flame,

Save the line where shines your name

Starlike down the graying years? . . .

Cleis speaks no word to me,

For the land where she has gone

Lies as still at dusk and dawn,

As a windless, tideless sea.

Sara Teasdale

At Night

WE are apart; the city grows quiet between us,

She hushes herself, for midnight makes heavy her eyes,

The tangle of traffic is ended, the cars are empty,

Five streets divide us, and on them the moonlight lies.

Oh are you asleep, or lying awake, my lover?

Open your dreams to my love and your heart to my words.

I send you my thoughts--the air between us is laden,

My thoughts fly in at your window, a flock of wild birds.

Sara Teasdale

April

THE roofs are shining from the rain.

The sparrows tritter as they fly,

And with a windy April grace

The little clouds go by.

Yet the back-yards are bare and brown

With only one unchanging tree--

I could not be so sure of Spring

Save that it sings in me.

Sara Teasdale

Come

COME, when the pale moon like a petal

Floats in the pearly dusk of spring,

Come with outstretched arms to take me,

Come with lips pursed up to cling.

Come, for life is a frail moth flying

Caught in the web of the years that pass,

And soon we two,so warm and eager,

Will be as the gray stones in the grass.

Sara Teasdale

Broadway

THIS is the quiet hour; the theaters

Have gathered in their crowds, and steadily

The million lights blaze on for few to see,

Robbing the sky of stars that should be hers.

A woman waits with bag and shabby furs,

A somber man drifts by, and only we

Pass up the street unwearied, warm and free,

For over us the olden magic stirs.

Beneath the liquid splendor of the lights

We live a little ere the charm is spent;

This night is ours, of all the golden nights,

   The pavement an enchanted palace floor,

And Youth the player on the viol, who sent

   A strain of music through an open door.

Sara Teasdale

In a Restaurant

THE darkened street was muffled with the snow,

The falling flakes had made your shoulders white,

And when we found a shelter from the night

Its glamor fell upon us like a blow.

The clash of dishes and the viol and bow

Mingled beneath the fever of the light.

The heat was full of savors, and the bright

Laughter of women lured the wine to flow.

A little child ate nothing while she sat

Watching a woman at a table there

Learn to kiss beneath a drooping hat.

   The hour went by, we rose and turned to go,

The somber street received us from the glare,

   And once more on your shoulders fell the snow.

Sara Teasdale

Summer Night, Riverside

IN the wild soft summer darkness

How many and many a night we two together

Sat in the park and watched the Hudson

Wearing her lights like golden spangles

Glinting on black satin.

The rail along the curving pathway

Was low in a happy place to let us cross,

And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom

Sheltered us,

While your kisses and the flowers,

Falling, falling,

Tangled in my hair. . . .

The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.

And now, far off

In the fragrant darkness

The tree is tremulous again with bloom

For June comes back.

To-night what girl

Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair

This year's blossoms, clinging to its coils?

Sara Teasdale

Indian Summer

LYRIC night of the lingering Indian summer,

Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,

Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,

Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper's horn, and far off, high in the maples

The wheel of a locust slowly grinding the silence,

Under a moon waning and warn and broken,

Tired with summer.

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,

Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,

Let me remember you, soon the winter will be on us,

Snow-hushed and heartless.

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction

While I gaze, oh fields that rest after harvest,

As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,

Lest they forget them.

Sara Teasdale

Doctors

EVERY night I lie awake

And every day I lie abed

And hear the doctors, Pain and Death,

Confering at my head.

They speak in scientific tones,

Professional and low--

One argues for a speedy cure,

The other, sure and slow.

To one so humble as myself

It should be matter for some pride

To have such noted fellows here,

Conferring at my side.

Sara Teasdale

The Rose

BENEATH my chamber window

Pierrot was singing, singing;

I heard his lute the whole night thru

     Until the east was red.

Alas, alas Pierrot,

I had no rose for flinging

Save one that drank my tears for dew

     Before its leaves were dead.

I found it in the darkness,

I kissed it once and threw it,

The petals scattered over him,

     His song was turned to joy;

And he will never know--

Alas, the one who knew it!

The rose was plucked when dusk was dim

     Beside a laughing boy.

Sara Teasdale

Pierrot's Song

(For a picture by Duncan Walker)

LADY, light in the east hangs low,

Draw your veils of dream apart,

Under the casement stands Pierrot

Making a song to ease his heart.

(Yet do not break the song too soon--

I love to sing in the paling moon.)

The petals are falling, heavy with dew,

The stars have fainted out of the sky,

Come to me, come, or else I too,

Faint with the weight of love will die.

(She comes--alas, I hoped to make

Another stanza for her sake!)

Sara Teasdale

Leaves

ONE by one, like leaves from a tree

All my faiths have forsaken me;

But the stars above my head

Burn in white and delicate red,

And beneath my feet the earth

Brings the sturdy grass to birth.

I who was content to be

But a silken-singing tree,

But a rustle of delight

In the wistful heart of night--

I have lost the leaves that knew

Touch of rain and weight of dew.

Blinded by a leafy crown

I looked neither up nor down--

But the little leaves that die

Have left me room to see the sky;

Now for the first time I know

Stars above and earth below.

Sara Teasdale

To E.

I HAVE remembered beauty in the night,

Against black silences I waked to see

A shower of sunlight over Italy

And green Ravello dreaming on her height;

I have remembered music in the dark,

The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,

And running water singing on the rocks

When once in English woods I heard a lark.

But all remembered beauty is no more

Than a vague pelude to the thought of you--

You are the rarest soul I ever knew,

     Lover of beauty, knightliest and best,

My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,

     And when I think of you I am at rest.

Sara Teasdale

The Fountain

OH in the deep blue night

The fountain sang alone;

It sang to the drowsy heart

Of a satyr carved in stone.

The fountain sang and sang

But the satyr never stirred--

Only the great white moon

In the empty heaven heard.

The fountain sang and sang

And on the marble rim

The milk-white peacocks slept,

Their dreams were strange and dim.

Bright dew was on the grass,

And on the ilex dew,

The dreamy milk-white birds

Were all a-glisten too.

The fountain sang and sang

The things one cannot tell,

The dreaming peacocks stirred

And the gleaming dew-drops fell.

Sara Teasdale

Tides

LOVE in my heart was a fresh tide flowing

Where the starlike sea gulls soar;

The sun was keen and the foam was blowing

High on the rocky shore.

But now in the dusk the tide is turning,

Lower the sea gulls soar,

And the waves that rose in resistless yearning

Are broken forevermore.

Sara Teasdale

Spring Rain

I THOUGHT I had forgotten,

But it all came back again

To-night with the first spring thunder

In a rush of rain.

I remembered a darkened doorway

Where we stood while the storm swept by,

Thunder gripping the earth

And lightning scrawled on the sky.

The passing motor busses swayed,

For the street was a river of rain,

Lashed into little golden waves

In the lamp light's stain.

With the wild spring rain and thunder

My heart was wild and gay;

Your eyes said more to me that night

Than your lips would ever say. . . .

I thought I had forgotten,

But it all came back again

To-night with the first spring thunder

In a rush of rain.

Sara Teasdale

Wisdom

WHEN I have ceased to break my wings

Against the faultiness of things,

And learned that compromises wait

Behind each hardly opened gate,

When I have looked Life in the eyes,

Grown calm and very coldly wise,

Life will have given me the Truth,

And taken in exchange--my youth.

Sara Teasdale

To-Night

THE moon is a curving flower of gold,

The sky is still and blue;

The moon was made for the sky to hold,

And I for you;

The moon is a flower without a stem,

The sky is luminous;

Eternity was made for them,

To-night for us.

Sara Teasdale