The Collected Poems 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.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“It is strange how often a heart must be broken
Before the years can make it wise.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“Places I love come back to me like music,
Hush me and heal me when I am very tired;
I see the oak woods at Saxton's flaming
In a flare of crimson by the frost newly fired;
And I am thirsty for the spring in the valley
As for a kiss ungiven and long desired.

I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton,
A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees,
The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle
Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze,
And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust
With the winer sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees.

Violet now, in veil on veil of evening,
The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far;
A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol
In the heart of the hollow where the dark pools are;
The primrose has opened her pale yellow flowers
And heaven is lighting star after star.

Places I love come back to me like music–
Mid-ocean, midnight, the eaves buzz drowsily;
In the ship's deep churning the eerie phosphorescence
Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea,
And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed , insistent,
At midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“When I am not with you
I am alone,
For there is no one else
And there is nothing
That comforts me but you.
When you are gone
Suddenly I am sick,
Blackness is round me,
There is nothing left.
I have tried many things,
Music and cities,
Stars in their constellations
And the sea,
But there is nothing
That comforts me but you;
And my poor pride bows down
Like grass in a rain-storm
Drenched with my longing.
The night is unbearable,
Oh let me go to you
For there is no one,
There is nothing
To comfort me but you.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“Come, then, and let us walk
Since we have reached the park. It is our garden,
All black and blossomless this winter night,
But we bring April with us, you and I;
We set the whole world on the trail of spring.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“How many times we must have met
Here on the street as strangers do,
Children of chance we were, who passed
The door of heaven and never knew.”
― sara teasdale, The Collected Poems

“The Long Hill

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 grabbing at the hem of my gown.

All 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.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“I have no riches but my thoughts,
Yet these are wealth enough for me;
My thoughts of you are golden coins
Stamped in the mint of memory;

And I must spend them all in song,
For thoughts, as well as gold, must be
Left on the hither side of death
To gain their immortality.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“Let it be you who lean above me
On my last day,
Let it be you who shut my eyelids
Forever and aye.

Say a 'Good-night' as you have said it
All of these years,
With the old look, with the old whisper
All without tears.

You will know then all that in silence
You always knew,
Though I have loved, I loved no other
As I love you.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.

Only in sleep Time is forgotten–
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.

The years had not sharpened their smooth around faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild–
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I, too, a child?”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“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 age lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“On a midsummer night, on a night that was eerie with stars,
In a wood too deep for a single star to look through,
You led down a path whose turnings you knew in the darkness,
But the scent of the dew-dripping cedars was all that I knew.

I drank of the darkness, I was fed with the honey of fragrance,
I was glad of my life, the drawing of breath was sweet;
I heard your voice, you said, 'Look down, see the glow-worm!'
It was there before me, a small star white at my feet.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“I saw a star slide down the sky,
Blinding the north as it went by,
Too burning and too quick to hold,
Too lovely to be bought or sold,
Good only to make wishes on
And then forever to be gone.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“Those who love the most
Do not talk of their love,
Francesca, Guenevere,
Dierdre, Iseult, Heloise
In the fragrant gardens of heaven
Are silent, or speak, if at all,
Of fragile, inconsequent things.
And a woman I used to know
Who loved one man from her youth,
Against the strength of the fates
Fighting in lonely pride,
Never spoke of this thing
But hearing his name by chance,
A light would pass over her face.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“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 the world is in your arms,
My sun and stars are you.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“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 good-by to you.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“Now while my lips are living
Their words must stay unsaid,
And will my soul remember
To speak when I am dead?

Yet if my soul remembered
You would not heed it, dear,
For now you must now listen,
And then you could not hear.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“It will not change now
After so many years;
Life has not broken it
With parting or tears;
Death will not alter it,
It will live on
In all my songs for you
When I am gone.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“Now at last I have come to see what life is,
Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun,
And the brave victories that seem so splendid
Are never really won.

Even love that I built my spirit's house for,
Comes like a brooding and a baffled guest,
And music and men's praise and even laughter
Are not so good as rest.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“There will be stars over the place forever;
Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost,
Every time the earth circles her orbit
On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight
Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep;
There will be stars over the place forever,
There will be stars forever, while we sleep.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“She must be rich who can forego
An hour so jewelled with delight,
She must have teasuries of joy
That she can draw on day and night,
She must be very sure of heaven–
Or is it only that she feels
How much more safe it is to lack
A thing that time so often steals.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“Never again the music blown as brightly
Off of my heart as foam blown off a wave;
Never again the melody that lightly
Caressed my grief and healed the wounds it gave.

Never again–I hear my dark thoughts clashing
Sullen and blind as waves that beat a wall–
Age that is coming, summer that is going,
All I have lost or never found at all.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“We are two eagles
Flying together
Under the heavens,
Over the mountains,
Stretched on the wind.
Sunlight heartens us,
Blind snow baffles us,
Clouds wheel after us
Ravelled and thinned.

We are like eagles
But when Death harries us,
Human and humbled
When one of us goes,
Let the other follow,
Let the flight be ended,
Let the fire blacken,
Let the book close.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“And when you spoke to me, I did not know
That to my life's high altar came its priest.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“To-night I close my eyes and see
A strange procession passing me–
The years before I saw your face
Go by me with a wistful grace;
They pass, the sensitive, shy years,
As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears.

The years went by and never knew
That each one brought me nearer you;
Their path was narrow and apart
And yet it led me to your heart–
Oh, sensitive, shy years, oh, lonely years,
That strove to sing with voices drown in tears.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“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, The Collected Poems

“When April bends above me
And finds me fast asleep,
Dust need not keep the secret
A live heart died to keep.

When April tells the thrushes,
The meadow-larks will know,
And pipe the three words lightly
To all the wind that blow.

Above his roof the swallows,
In notes like far-blown rain,
Will tell the chirping sparrow
Beside his window-pane.

O sparrow, little sparrow,
When I am fast asleep,
Then tell my love the secret
That I have died to keep.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“I gave my first love laughter,
I gave my second tears,
I gave my third love silence
Through all the years.

My first love gave me singing,
My second eyes to see,
But oh, it was my third love
Who gave my soul to me.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“V. Night Song At Amafi

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 fishers go–
It answered me with silence,
Silence below.

Oh, I could give him weeping,
Or I could give him song–
But how can I give silence
My whole life long?”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“You took my empty dreams
And filled them every one
With tenderness and nobleness,
April and the sun.

The old empty dreams
Where my thoughts would throng
Ae far too full of happiness
To even hold a song.

Oh, the empty dreams were dim
And the empty dreams were wide,
They were sweet and shadowy houses
Where my thoughts could hide.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems