Happy Birthday, Sara

Today in St Louis, Missouri, in 1884 Sara Teasdale was born.

A Little While

A little while when I am gone
My life will live in music after me,
As spun foam lifted and borne on
After the wave is lost in the full sea.

A while these nights and days will burn
In song with the bright frailty of foam,
Living in light before they turn
Back to the nothingness that is their home.


In a Garden

THE world is resting without sound or motion,
Behind the apple tree the sun goes down
Painting with fire the spires and the windows
In the elm-shaded town.
Beyond the calm Connecticut the hills lie
Silvered with haze as fruits still fresh with bloom,
The swallows weave in flight across the zenith
On an aerial loom.
Into the garden peace comes back with twilight,
Peace that since noon had left the purple phlox,
The heavy-headed asters, the late roses
And swaying hollyhocks.
For at high-noon I heard from this same garden
The far-off murmur as when many come;
Up from the village surged the blind and beating
Red music of a drum;
And the hysterical sharp fife that shattered
The brittle autumn air,
While they came, the young men marching
Past the village square....
Across the calm Connecticut the hills change
To violet, the veils of dusk are deep—
Earth takes her children's many sorrows calmly
And stills herself to sleep.




(more poems here)