“i’m cold and i am shamed / lying naked on the floor / illusion never changed / into something real”
For Poetry Monday, do we have time for more Teasdale?
Spring Night, Sara Teasdale
The park is filled with night and fog,
The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
Are dim and pearled.
Gold and gleaming the empty streets,
Gold and gleaming the misty lake,
The mirrored lights like sunken swords,
Glimmer and shake.
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?
Yes—there is always time for more Teasdale. Unlike the previous handful of early 20th century female poets, her husband was not a writer, though Vachel Lindsay courted her hard in the early 1910s (she instead married a wealthy industrialist).
---L.
Subject quote from Torn, Natalie Imbruglia.
Spring Night, Sara Teasdale
The park is filled with night and fog,
The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
Are dim and pearled.
Gold and gleaming the empty streets,
Gold and gleaming the misty lake,
The mirrored lights like sunken swords,
Glimmer and shake.
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?
Yes—there is always time for more Teasdale. Unlike the previous handful of early 20th century female poets, her husband was not a writer, though Vachel Lindsay courted her hard in the early 1910s (she instead married a wealthy industrialist).
---L.
Subject quote from Torn, Natalie Imbruglia.