“And, therefore, let the immeasurable come. / Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, more Teasdale wrestling with spirituality:

Mastery, Sara Teasdale

I would not have a god come in
To shield me suddenly from sin,
And set my house of life to rights;
Nor angels with bright burning wings
Ordering my earthly thoughts and things;
Rather my own frail guttering lights
Wind blown and nearly beaten out;
Rather the terror of the nights
And long, sick groping after doubt;
Rather be lost than let my soul
Slip vaguely from my own control—
Of my own spirit let me be
In sole though feeble mastery.


This is the second of a seven-poem cycle called “Songs Out of Sorrow” from her 1917 collection Love Songs, the one that won the first Pulitzer for poetry.

---L.

Subject quote from Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith, Mary Oliver.

Comments

[mount_oregano]

Wonderful poem. Thank you!

[larryhammer]

I need to read more Teasdale. Again.

[puddleshark]

Love this.

Thank you.

[larryhammer]

The complete cycle is worth tracking down.

[ranunculus]

It is possible that I would take time to read poetry if more poems were like this.

[larryhammer]

You might want to look for anthologies covering the first, oh, 20 or 25 years of the 20th century then -- the period where the best poets were very consciously trying to not be Victorians, but Modernism hadn't yet finished coalesced out of the resulting primordial soup.