“Measure me, sky! / Tell me I reach by a song / Nearer the stars: / I have been little so long.”

For Poetry Monday:

Twilight (Tucson), Sara Teasdale

Aloof as aged kings,
Wearing like them the purple,
The mountains ring the mesa
Crowned with a dusky light;
Many a time I watched
That coming-on of darkness
Till stars burned through the heavens
Intolerably bright.

It was not long I lived there,
But I became a woman
Under those vehement stars,
For it was there I heard
For the first time my spirit
Forging an iron rule for me,
As though with slow cold hammers
Beating out word by word:

“Take love when love is given,
But never think to find it
A sure escape from sorrow
Or a complete repose;
Only yourself can heal you,
Only yourself can lead you
Up the hard road to heaven
That ends where no one knows.”


More Teasdale, again. First published in 1922, the first of a set of four poems under the title “Places.” NB: There are no mesas in the immediate vicinity of Tucson, only mountains.

---L.

Subject quote from Measure Me, Sky, Leonora Speyer.