There is a star, deep in the lake, a star!
Oh, dimmer than a pearl -- if you stoop down
Your hand could almost reach it up to me. . . .
There was a new frail yellow moon to-night --
I wish you could have had it for a cup
With stars like dew to fill it to the brim. . . .
How cold it is! Even the lights are cold;
They have put shawls of fog around them, see!
What if the air should grow so dimly white
That we would lose our way along the paths
Made new by walls of moving mist receding
The more we follow. . . . What a silver night!
That was our bench the time you said to me
The long new poem -- but how different now,
How eerie with the curtain of the fog
Making it strange to all the friendly trees!
There is no wind, and yet great curving scrolls
Carve themselves, ever changing, in the mist.
Walk on a little, let me stand here watching
To see you, too, grown strange to me and far. . . .
I used to wonder how the park would be
If one night we could have it all alone --
No lovers with close arm-encircled waists
To
whisper and break in upon our dreams.
And now we have it! Every wish comes true!
We are alone now in a
fleecy world;
Even the stars have gone. We two alone!
[End of Love Songs.]
{As an item of interest to the reader, the following,
which was at the end of this
edition, is included.
Only the
advertisement for the same author is included}.
By the same author
Rivers to the Sea
"There is hardly another American woman-poet whose
poetry is generally
known and loved like that of Sara Teasdale. `Rivers to the Sea',
her latest
volume of lyrics, possesses the
delicacy of imagery,
the
inwardillumination, the high
vision that
characterize the
poetrythat will
endure the test of time." -- `Review of Reviews'.
"`Rivers to the Sea' is a book of sheer delight. . . . Her touch
turns everything to song." -- Edward J. Wheeler, in `Current Opinion'.
"Sara Teasdale's lyrics have the clarity, the precision,
the grace and
fragrance of flowers." -- Harriet Monroe, in `Poetry'.
"Sara Teasdale has a
genius for the song, for the perfect lyric,
in which the words seem to have fallen into place without art or effort."
-- Louis Untermeyer, in `The Chicago Evening Post'.
"`Rivers to the Sea' is the best book of pure lyrics
that has appeared in English since A. E. Housman's `A Shropshire Lad'."
-- William Marion Reedy, in `The Mirror'.
"`Rivers to the Sea' is the most beautiful book of pure lyrics
that has come to my hand in years." -- `Los Angeles Graphic'.
"Sara Teasdale sings about love better than any other contemporary
American poet." -- `The Boston Transcript'.
"`Rivers to the Sea' is the most
charmingvolume of
poetry that has appeared
on either side of the Atlantic in a score of years." -- `St. Louis Republic'.
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933):
Teasdale was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where she attended a school
that was founded by the
grandfather of another great poet from St. Louis --
T. S. Eliot. She later associated herself more with New York City.
Her first book of poems was "Sonnets to Duse" (1907),
[at least one poem in the current
volume, "Faults", is from this book,]
but "Helen of Troy" (1911) was the true
launch of her career,
followed by "Rivers to the Sea" (1915), "Love Songs" (1917),
"Flame and Shadow" (1920) and more. Her final
volume, "Strange Victory",
is considered by many to be predictive of her
suicide in 1933.
End