Helen of Troy And Other Poems

by Sara Teasdale
To Marion Cummings Stanley

Contents
Helen of Troy

Beatrice
Sappho

Marianna Alcoforando
Guenevere

Erinna
Love Songs

Song
The Rose and the Bee

The Song Maker
Wild Asters

When Love Goes
The Wayfarer

The Princess in the Tower
When Love Was Born

The Shrine
The Blind

Love Me
The Song for Colin

Four Winds
Roundel

Dew
A Maiden

"I Love You"
But Not to Me

Hidden Love
Snow Song

Youth and the Pilgrim
The Wanderer

I Would Live in Your Love
May

Rispetto
Less than the Cloud to the Wind

Buried Love
Song

Pierrot
At Night

Song
Love in Autumn

The Kiss
November

A Song of the Princess
The Wind

A Winter Night
The Metropolitan Tower

Gramercy Park
In the Metropolitan Museum

Coney Island
Union Square

Central Park at Dusk
Young Love

Sonnets and Lyrics
Primavera Mia

Soul's Birth
Love and Death

For the Anniversary of John Keats' Death
Silence

The Return
Fear

Anadyomene
Galahad in the Castle of the Maidens

To an Aeolian Harp
To Erinna

To Cleis
Paris in Spring

Madeira from the Sea
City Vignettes

By the Sea
On the Death of Swinburne

Triolets
Vox Corporis

A Ballad of Two Knights
Christmas Carol

The Faery Forest
A Fantasy

A Minuet of Mozart's
Twilight

The Prayer
Two Songs for a Child

On the Tower
Helen of Troy and Other Poems

Helen of Troy
Wild flight on flight against the fading dawn

The flames' red wings soar upward duskily.
This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead

That sparkled so the day I saw it first,
And darkened slowly after. I am she

Who loves all beauty -- yet I wither it.
Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath --

Forever since my maidenhood to sow
Sorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keep

Their bitter care above me even now.
It was the gods who led me to this lair,

That tho' the burning winds should make me weak,
They should not snatch the life from out my lips.

Olympus let the other women die;
They shall be quiet when the day is done

And have no care to-morrow. Yet for me
There is no rest. The gods are not so kind

To her made half immortal like themselves.
It is to you I owe the cruel gift,

Leda, my mother, and the Swan, my sire,
To you the beauty and to you the bale;

For never woman born of man and maid
Had wrought such havoc on the earth as I,

Or troubled heaven with a sea of flame
That climbed to touch the silent whirling stars

And blotted out their brightness ere the dawn.
Have I not made the world to weep enough?

Give death to me. Yet life is more than death;
How could I leave the sound of singing winds,

The strong sweet scent that breathes from off the sea,
Or shut my eyes forever to the spring?

I will not give the grave my hands to hold,
My shining hair to light oblivion.

Have those who wander through the ways of death,
The still wan fields Elysian, any love

To lift their breasts with longing, any lips
To thirst against the quiver of a kiss?

Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again,
To make the people love, who hate me now.

My dreams are over, I have ceased to cry
Against the fate that made men love my mouth

And left their spirits all too deaf to hear
The little songs that echoed through my soul.

I have no anger now. The dreams are done;
Yet since the Greeks and Trojans would not see

Aught but my body's fairness, till the end,
In all the islands set in all the seas,

And all the lands that lie beneath the sun,
Till light turn darkness, and till time shall sleep,

Men's lives shall waste with longing after me,
For I shall be the sum of their desire,

The whole of beauty, never seen again.
And they shall stretch their arms and starting, wake

With "Helen!" on their lips, and in their eyes
The vision of me. Always I shall be

Limned on the darkness like a shaft of light
That glimmers and is gone. They shall behold

Each one his dream that fashions me anew; --
With hair like lakes that glint beneath the stars

Dark as sweet midnight, or with hair aglow
Like burnished gold that still retains the fire.

Yea, I shall haunt until the dusk of time
The heavy eyelids filled with fleeting dreams.

I wait for one who comes with sword to slay --
The king I wronged who searches for me now;

And yet he shall not slay me. I shall stand
With lifted head and look within his eyes,

Baring my breast to him and to the sun.
He shall not have the power to stain with blood

That whiteness -- for the thirsty sword shall fall
And he shall cry and catch me in his arms,

Bearing me back to Sparta on his breast.
Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again!

Beatrice
Send out the singers -- let the room be still;

They have not eased my pain nor brought me sleep.
Close out the sun, for I would have it dark

That I may feel how black the grave will be.
The sun is setting, for the light is red,

And you are outlined in a golden fire,
Like Ursula upon an altar-screen.

Come, leave the light and sit beside my bed,
For I have had enough of saints and prayers.

Strange broken thoughts are beating in my brain,
They come and vanish and again they come.

It is the fever driving out my soul,
And Death stands waiting by the arras there.

Ornella, I will speak, for soon my lips
Shall keep a silence till the end of time.

You have a mouth for loving -- listen then:
Keep tryst with Love before Death comes to tryst;

For I, who die, could wish that I had lived
A little closer to the world of men,

Not watching always thro' the blazoned panes
That show the world in chilly greens and blues

And grudge the sunshine that would enter in.
I was no part of all the troubled crowd

That moved beneath the palace windows here,
And yet sometimes a knight in shining steel

Would pass and catch the gleaming of my hair,
And wave a mailed hand and smile at me,

Whereat I made no sign and turned away,
Affrighted and yet glad and full of dreams.

Ah, dreams and dreams that asked no answering!
I should have wrought to make my dreams come true,

But all my life was like an autumn day,
Full of gray quiet and a hazy peace.

What was I saying? All is gone again.
It seemed but now I was the little child

Who played within a garden long ago.
Beyond the walls the festal trumpets blared.

Perhaps they carried some Madonna by
With tossing ensigns in a sea of flowers,

A painted Virgin with a painted Child,
Who saw for once the sweetness of the sun

• princess [,prin´ses] n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人 (初中英语单词)
• flight [flait] n.逃走；飞行；班机 (初中英语单词)
• upward [´ʌpwəd] a.&ad.向上(的)；以上 (初中英语单词)
• funeral [´fju:nərəl] n.葬礼，丧葬；困难 (初中英语单词)
• snatch [snætʃ] v.&n.抢，夺取，抓住 (初中英语单词)
• immortal [i´mɔ:təl] a.不死的n.不朽的人物 (初中英语单词)
• wrought [rɔ:t] work 的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
• wander [´wɔndə, ´wɑ:n:dər] v.徘徊；流浪 (初中英语单词)
• thirst [θə:st] n.渴，口渴；渴望 (初中英语单词)
• quiver [´kwivə] v.抖动 n.颤动(声) (初中英语单词)
• conquer [´kɔŋkə] v.征服；克服；抑制 (初中英语单词)
• greece [gri:s] n.希腊 (初中英语单词)
• vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
• midnight [´midnait] n.午夜；漆黑 (初中英语单词)
• vanish [´væniʃ] vi.消失；消散；消灭 (初中英语单词)
• waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
• chilly [´tʃili] a.凉飕飕的 (初中英语单词)
• sunshine [´sʌnʃain] n.日光，阳光 (初中英语单词)
• ballad [´bæləd] n.民歌，民谣 (高中英语单词)
• wither [´wiðə] v.(使)枯萎(衰弱) (高中英语单词)
• brightness [´braitnis] n.光明；快乐 (高中英语单词)
• longing [´lɔŋiŋ] n.&a.渴望(的) (高中英语单词)
• loving [´lʌviŋ] a.爱的，有爱情的 (高中英语单词)
• grudge [grʌdʒ] vt.&n.吝啬；怨恨 (高中英语单词)
• knight [nait] n.骑士；爵士 (高中英语单词)
• saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
• virgin [´və:dʒin] a.处女(般)的 n.处女 (高中英语单词)
• sweetness [´swi:tnis] n.甜蜜；芳香；亲切 (高中英语单词)
• metropolitan [,metrə´pɔlitən] a.大城市的 n.大城市人 (英语四级单词)
• anniversary [,æni´və:səri] n.周年纪念(日) (英语四级单词)
• setting [´setiŋ] n.安装；排字；布景 (英语四级单词)
• fairness [´fɛənis] n.公正；晴朗 (英语六级单词)
• fleeting [´fli:tiŋ] a.飞逝的，疾驰的 (英语六级单词)
• beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
• madonna [mə´dɔnə] n.圣母玛利亚；圣母像 (英语六级单词)