THE RED WHEELBARROW

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

FLOWERS BY THE SEA

When over the flowery, sharp pasture's
edge, unseen, the salt ocean

lifts its form-chicory and daisies
tide, released, seem hardly flowers alone

but color and the movement—or the shape
perhaps of restlessness, whereas

the sea is circled and sways
peacefully upon its plantlike stem

THE POOR

It's the anarchy of poverty delights me, the old

yellow wooden house indented among the new brick tenements

Or a cast iron balcony

with panels showing oak branches in full leaf. It fits

the dress of the children

reflecting every stage and
custom of necessity—
Chimneys, roofs, fences of
wood and metal in an unfenced

age and enclosing next to
nothing at all: the old man
in a sweater and soft black
hat who sweeps the sidewalk-

his own ten feet of it-
in a wind that fitfully
turning his corner has
overwhelmed the entire city

THESE

are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man.

The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night

to an empty, windswept place
without sun, stars or moon
but a peculiar light as of thought

that spins a dark fire-
whirling upon itself until,
in the cold, it kindles

to make a man aware of nothing that he knows, not loneliness itself Not a ghost but

would be embraced-emptiness, despair- (They

whine and whistle) among

the flashes and booms of war; houses of whose rooms

the cold is greater than can be thought,

the people gone that we loved, the beds lying empty, the couches damp, the chairs unused

Hide it away somewhere

out of the mind, let it get roots
and grow, unrelated to jealous
ears and eyes-for itself.

In this mine they come to dig-all.
Is this the counterfoil to sweetest

music? The source of poetry that
seeing the clock stopped, says,
The clock has stopped

that ticked yesterday so well? and hears the sound of lakewater splashing-that is now stone.

Sara Teasdale

ara teasdale was born August 8, 1884, in St. Louis, Missouri, and educated there. After leaving school she traveled in Europe and the Near East. She was fascinated and frightened by the poet Vachel Lindsay who courted her with overwhelming exuberance. In 1914 she married Ernst Filsinger and, two years later, moved with him to New York. But she was essentially the solitary spirit pictured in her poem on page 318, and the marriage was not successful. After her divorce, she lived in seclusion, and ill health emphasized her unhappiness. She was found drowned in the bath of her New York apartment, January 28, 1933.

Her first book was a slight volume, Sonnets to Duse (1907), which gave little promise of the lyricism to follow. Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911) contains hints of that delicate craftsmanship which this poet brought to such finesse. The six opening monologues are written in a blank verse as musical as many of her lyrics. At times her quatrains suffer from too conscious a cleverness; the dexterity with which Miss Teasdale turns a phrase or twists her last line is frequently too obtrusive to be unreservedly enjoyable. Moreover, they seem written in a mood of predetermined and too picturesque romance, the mood of languishing roses, silken balconies, moonlight on guitars, and abstract kisses for unreal Colins.

Rivers to the Sea (1915) emphasizes a new skill and a greater restraint. The volume contains at least a dozen unforgettable snatches, lyrics in which the words seem to fall into place without art or effort. Seldom employing metaphor or striking

imagery, almost bare of ornament, these poems have the touch of folk-song. Theirs is an artlessness that is something more than art.

Love Songs (1917) is a collection of Miss Teasdale's previous melodies for the viola d'amore together with several in which the turns are no longer obviously unexpected. Maturity is evident in the poet's rejection of many of her facile stanzas and her choice of firmer material.

Flame and Shadow (1920; revised edition, published in England, in 1924) is the ripest of her books. Here the emotion is fuller and deeper; an almost mystic radiance plays from these verses. Technically, also, this volume marks Miss Teasdale's greatest advance. The words are chosen with a keener sense of their actual as well as their musical values; the rhythms are more subtle and varied; the line moves with a greater naturalness. Beneath the symbolism of poems like "Water-Lilies," "The Long Hill," and "Let It Be Forgotten," one is conscious of a finer artistry, a more flexible speech that is all the lovelier for its slight (and logical) irregularities.

After Flame and Shadow Miss Teasdale's theme became somewhat autumnal. Though never funereal, the songs are preoccupied with the coming of age, the gathering of night, the mutability of things. Dark of the Moon (1926) is more thoughtful than any other previous verse. It is, as the title indicates, even more somber. If the movement is slower it is a no less delicate music that moves under the surface rhythms. "Wisdom," "The Solitary," "The Flight" may not be the most popular poems that Miss Teasdale has written, but they must be numbered among her best. Hers is a disillusion without cynicism; her proud acceptance of life's darker aspects adds new dignity to the old lyricism.

Strange Victory (1933) is Sara Teasdale's posthumous memorial to a world she never quite despised yet never wholly trusted. The poems are sad yet not sentimental. Though death overshadows the book there is never the querulous cry of frustration nor the melodrama of dying. As in the later lyrics the lines are direct, the emotion unwhipped; the beauty is in the restraint, the careful selection, the compression into the essential spirit, into a last serenity. It is an irony that as her admirers grew less voluble her work increased in value.

Besides her own books, Miss Teasdale had compiled an anthology, The Answering Voice (1917), comprising one hundred love lyrics by women, and a collection for children, Rainbow Gold (1922).

Oh, is it not enough to be

Here with this beauty over me?

My throat should ache with praise, and I
Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.
O beauty, are you not enough?
Why am I crying after love

With youth, a singing voice, and eyes
To take earth's wonder with surprise?

Why have I put off my pride,
Why am I unsatisfied,—
I, for whom the pensive night
Binds her cloudy hair with light,-
I, for whom all beauty burns
Like incense in a million urns?
O beauty, are you not enough?
Why am I crying after love?

I SHALL NOT CARE

When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,

Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

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.

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 catching 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.

WATER-LILIES

If you have forgotten water-lilies floating

On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,
If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance,

Then you can return and not be afraid.

But if you remember, then turn away forever

To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart,
There you will not come at dusk on closing water-lilies,
And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your heart.

LET IT BE FORGOTTEN

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago,

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long-forgotten snow.

WISDOM

It was a night of early spring,

The winter-sleep was scarcely broken;
Around us shadows and the wind
Listened for what was never spoken.

Though half a score of years are gone,
Spring comes as sharply now as then-
But if we had it all to do

It would be done the same again.

It was a spring that never came;
But we have lived enough to know
That what we never have, remains;
It is the things we have that go.

THE SOLITARY

My heart has grown rich with the passing of years,
Í have less need now than when I was young
To share myself with every comer,

Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.

It is one to me that they come or go

If I have myself and the drive of my will,
And strength to climb on a summer night
And watch the stars swarm over the hill.

Let them think I love them more than I do,
Let them think I care, though I go alone,
If it lifts their pride, what is it to me,
Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone?

THE CRYSTAL GAZER

I shall gather myself into myself again,

I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,

I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball

Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.