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Flame and Shadow?By Sara Teasdale
[Note on text: Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces.?Italicized words or phrases are marked by tildes (~).?Lines longer than 78 characters are broken according to metre, and the continuation is indented two spaces. Also, some obvious errors may have been corrected.]
Flame and Shadow
By Sara Teasdale?Author of "Rivers to the Sea", "Love Songs", etc.
To E.
"Recois la flamme ou l'ombre
De tous mes jours."
Contents
I
Blue Squills?Stars?"What Do I Care?"?Meadowlarks?Driftwood?"I Have Loved Hours at Sea"?August Moonrise
Memories
II
Places?Old Tunes?"Only in Sleep"?Redbirds?Sunset: St. Louis?The Coin?The Voice
III
Day and Night?Compensation?I Remembered?"Oh You Are Coming"?The Return?Gray Eyes?The Net?The Mystery
In a Hospital
IV
Open Windows?The New Moon?Eight O'Clock?Lost Things?Pain?The Broken Field?The Unseen?A Prayer
V
Spring Torrents?"I Know the Stars"?Understanding?Nightfall?"It Is Not a Word"?"My Heart Is Heavy"?The Nights Remember?"Let It Be Forgotten"
The Dark Cup
VI
May Day?"Since There Is No Escape"?"The Dreams of My Heart"?"A Little While"?The Garden?The Wine?In a Cuban Garden?"If I Must Go"
VII
In Spring, Santa Barbara?White Fog?Arcturus?Moonlight?Morning Song?Gray Fog?Bells?Lovely Chance
VIII
"There Will Come Soft Rains"?In a Garden?Nahant?Winter Stars?A Boy?Winter Dusk
By the Sea
IX
The Unchanging?June Night?"Like Barley Bending"?"Oh Day of Fire and Sun"?"I Thought of You"?On the Dunes?Spray?If Death Is Kind
X
Thoughts?Faces?Evening: New York?Snowfall?The Silent Battle?The Sanctuary?At Sea?Dust?The Long Hill
XI
Summer Storm?In the End?"It Will Not Change"?Change?Water Lilies?"Did You Never Know?"?The Treasure?The Storm
Songs For Myself
XII
The Tree?At Midnight?Song Making?Alone?Red Maples?Debtor?The Wind in the Hemlock
Flame and Shadow
I
Blue Squills
How many million Aprils came?Before I ever knew?How white a cherry bough could be,?A bed of squills, how blue!
And many a dancing April?When life is done with me,?Will lift the blue flame of the flower?And the white flame of the tree.
Oh burn me with your beauty, then,?Oh hurt me, tree and flower,?Lest in the end death try to take?Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,?O sunlit white and blue,?Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,?May bear the scar of you.
Stars
Alone in the night?On a dark hill?With pines around me?Spicy and still,
And a heaven full of stars?Over my head,?White and topaz?And misty red;
Myriads with beating?Hearts of fire?That aeons?Cannot vex or tire;
Up the dome of heaven?Like a great hill,?I watch them marching?Stately and still,
And I know that I?Am honored to be?Witness?Of so much majesty.
"What Do I Care?"
What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,?That my songs do not show me at all??For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,?I am an answer, they are only a call.
But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,?Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,?For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,?It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.
Meadowlarks
In the silver light after a storm,?Under dripping boughs of bright new green,?I take the low path to hear the meadowlarks?Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen.
What have I to fear in life or death?Who have known three things: the kiss in the night,?The white flying joy when a song is born,?And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.
Driftwood
My forefathers gave me?My spirit's shaken flame,?The shape of hands, the beat of heart,?The letters of my name.
But it was my lovers,?And not my sleeping sires,?Who gave the flame its changeful?And iridescent fires;
As the driftwood burning?Learned its jewelled blaze?From the sea's blue splendor?Of colored nights and days.
"I Have Loved Hours at Sea"
I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,?The fragile secret of a flower,?Music, the making of a poem?That gave me heaven for an hour;
First stars above a snowy hill,?Voices of people kindly and wise,?And the great look of love, long hidden,?Found at last in meeting eyes.
I have loved much and been loved deeply --?Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,?Leave me the darkness and the stillness,?I shall be tired and glad to go.
August Moonrise
The sun was gone, and the moon was coming?Over the blue Connecticut hills;?The west was rosy, the east was flushed,?And over my head the swallows rushed?This way and that, with changeful wills.?I heard them twitter and watched them dart?Now together and now apart?Like dark petals blown from a tree;?The maples stamped against the west?Were black and stately and full of rest,?And the hazy orange moon grew up?And slowly changed to yellow gold?While the hills were darkened, fold on fold?To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.?Down the hill I went, and then?I forgot the ways of men,?For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool?Wakened ecstasy in me?On the brink of a shining pool.
O Beauty, out of many a cup?You have made me drunk and wild?Ever since I was a child,?But when have I been sure as now?That no bitterness can bend?And no sorrow wholly bow?One who loves you to the end??And though I must give my breath?And my laughter all to death,?And my eyes through which joy came,?And my heart, a wavering flame;?If all must leave me and go back?Along a blind and fearful track?So that you 
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