Sara Teasdale
Today we note the birth date of Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 —January 29, 1933), American poet whose short, personal lyrics were noted for their classical simplicity and quiet intensity.
Teasdale’s poems are consistently classical in style. She wrote technically excellent, pure, openhearted lyrics usually in such conventional verse forms as quatrains or sonnets. Her growth as a poet is nonetheless evident in Flame and Shadow (1920), Dark of the Moon (1926), and Stars To-night (1930). The poems in these collections evince an increasing subtlety and economy of expression.
Teasdale’s marriage ended in divorce in 1929, and she lived thereafter the life of a semi-invalid. In 1933, in frail health after a recent bout of pneumonia, she took her own life with an overdose of barbiturates. Her last and perhaps finest collection of verse, Strange Victory, was published later that year. Her Collected Poems appeared in 1937.
Summer Night, Riverside
In the wild soft summer darkness
How many and many a night we two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin.
The rail along the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us,
While your kisses and the flowers,
Falling, falling,
Tangled in my hair. . . .
The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.
And now, far off
In the fragrant darkness
The tree is tremulous again with bloom
For June comes back.
To-night what girl
Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair
This year's blossoms, clinging to its coils?