Sara Teasdale Quotes

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

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

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.

In my heart's most secret place,
I pity them as angels do.

It is strange how often a heart must be broken
Before the years can make it wise.

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 can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange - my youth.

If I Must Go

If I must go to heaven's end
Climbing the ages like a stair,
Be near me and forever bend
With the same eyes above me there;
Time will fly past us like leaves flying,
We shall not heed, for we shall be
Beyond living, beyond dying,
Knowing and known unchangeably.

You will recognize your own path
when you come upon it
because you will suddenly have all the energy
and imagination you will ever need.

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.

Let me remember you, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heartless.

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.

I have no riches but my thoughts,
Yet these are wealth enough for me

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

Autumn Dusk

I saw above a sea of hills
A solitary planet shine,
And there was no one, near or far,
to keep the world from being mine.

Never fear the thing you feel-
Only by love is life made real

Down the hill I went, and then,
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy

The Net

I made you many and many a song,
Yet never one told all you are-
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;

It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea.

Pain

Waves are the sea's white daughters,
And raindrops the children of rain,
But why for my shimmering body
Have I a mother like Pain?

Night is the mother of stars,
And wind the mother of foam -
The world is brimming with beauty,
But I must stay at home.