“peace whose names are also rapture, power, / Clear sight, and love: for these are parts of peace”

For Poetry Monday:

The Long Hill, Sara Teasdale

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 it would 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.


Speaking of Teasdale, let’s have another. This one’s very Christina Rossetti.

---L.

Subject quote from Wordsworth’s Grave, William Watson.