The Palms Art Gallery

SARA TEASDALE

   Sara Teasdale lived in the turn into the twentith century     And saw our socity move from a victorian farming base,         into a industrial urban centered one.

                    She, like so many poets of her time, was very concerned about the forward modernization of socity causing more and more harm to the romantic life of men and woman.

Her work is very personal, endearing and revealing of the human condition, its needs, boundries and inner landscape-Weighing each aganst "The faithful beauty of the stars"

These insights across the themes of her work made her very inspirational and incredably famious.

There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white.

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.



Winter Stars

I went out at night alone;
The young blood flowing beyond the sea
Seemed to have drenched my spirit's wings --
I bore my sorrow heavily.
But when I lifted up my head
From shadows shaken on the snow,
I saw Orion in the east
Burn steadily as long ago.

From windows in my father's house,
Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,
I watched Orion as a girl
Above another city's lights.

Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,
The world's heart breaks beneath its wars,
All things are changed, save in the east
The faithful beauty of the stars.



I Would Live In Your Love

I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,
Borne up by each wave as it passes,
drawn down by each wave that recedes;

I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,
I would beat with your heart as it beats,
I would follow your soul as it leads. 

May Wind

I SAID, "I have shut my heart
As one shuts an open door,
That Love may starve therein
And trouble me no more."

But over the roofs there came
The wet new wind of May,
And a tune blew up from the curb
Where the street-pianos play.

My room was white with the sun
And Love cried out in me,
"I am strong, I will break your heart
Unless you set me free."



 The Falling Star



Because

Oh, because you never tried
To bow my will or break my pride,
And nothing of the cave-man made
You want to keep me half afraid,
Nor ever with a conquering air

You thought to draw me unaware --
Take me, for I love you more
Than I ever loved before.

And since the body's maidenhood
Alone were neither rare nor good
Unless with it I gave to you
A spirit still untrammeled, too,

Take my dreams and take my mind
That were masterless as wind;
And "Master!" I shall say to you
Since you never asked me to.



Sara Teasdale

1884-1933