Love Songs | Page 3

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Illinois Benedictine College".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
Love Songs
By Sara Teasdale [American (Missouri & New York)
poet, 1884-1933.]

[Note on text: Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces.
Two italicized
lines are marked by asterisks (*).
Lines longer than 78 characters are
broken,
and the continuation is indented two spaces.]
[This etext was transcribed from a 1918 reprinting of the 1917 edition,
which was the original. It is interesting that some of those poems
included from earlier volumes have been slightly changed in this book.]
Love Songs
By Sara Teasdale
Author of "Rivers to the Sea", "Helen of Troy and
Other Poems", Etc.
To E.
I have remembered beauty in the night,
Against black silences I
waked to see
A shower of sunlight over Italy
And green Ravello
dreaming on her height;
I have remembered music in the dark,
The
clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,
And running water
singing on the rocks
When once in English woods I heard a lark.
But all remembered beauty is no more
Than a vague prelude to the
thought of you --
You are the rarest soul I ever knew,
Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;
My thoughts seek you as waves
that seek the shore,
And when I think of you, I am at rest.
Prefatory Note
Beside new poems, this book contains lyrics taken from "Rivers to the
Sea", "Helen of Troy and Other Poems", and one or two from an earlier
volume.
Contents

I
Barter
Twilight
Night Song at Amalfi
The Look
A Winter Night

A Cry
Gifts
But Not to Me
Song at Capri
Child, Child
Love
Me
Pierrot
Wild Asters
The Song for Colin
Four Winds
Debt

Faults
Buried Love
The Fountain
I Shall Not Care
After
Parting
A Prayer
Spring Night
May Wind
Tides
After Love

New Love and Old
The Kiss
Swans
The River
November

Spring Rain
The Ghost
Summer Night, Riverside
Jewels
II
Interlude: Songs out of Sorrow
I. Spirit's House
II. Mastery
III. Lessons
IV. Wisdom
V. In a
Burying Ground
VI. Wood Song
VII. Refuge
III
The Flight
Dew
To-night
Ebb Tide
I Would Live in Your Love

Because

The Tree of Song
The Giver
April Song
The
Wanderer
The Years
Enough
Come
Joy
Riches
Dusk in War
Time
Peace
Moods
Houses of Dreams
Lights
"I Am Not
Yours"
Doubt
The Wind
Morning
Other Men
Embers

Message
The Lamp
IV
A November Night
Love Songs
I
Barter
Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue

waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And
children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.
Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine
trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your
spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;

For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well
lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could
be.
Twilight
Dreamily over the roofs
The cold spring rain is falling;
Out in the
lonely tree
A bird is calling, calling.
Slowly over the earth
The wings of night are falling;
My heart like
the bird in the tree
Is calling, calling, calling.
Night Song at Amalfi
I asked the heaven of stars
What I should give my love --
It
answered me with silence,
Silence above.
I asked the darkened sea
Down where the fishers go --
It answered
me with silence,
Silence below.
Oh, I could give him weeping,
Or I could give him song --
But how
can I give silence,
My whole life long?
The Look
Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only
looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in
Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.
A Winter Night
My window-pane is starred with frost,
The world is bitter cold
to-night,
The moon is cruel, and the wind
Is like a two-edged sword
to smite.
God pity all the homeless ones,
The beggars pacing to and fro,
God
pity all the poor to-night
Who walk the lamp-lit streets of snow.
My room is like a bit of June,
Warm and close-curtained fold on fold,

But somewhere, like a homeless child,
My heart is crying in the
cold.
A Cry
Oh, there are eyes that he can see,
And hands to make his hands
rejoice,
But to my lover I must be
Only a voice.
Oh, there are breasts to bear his head,
And lips whereon his lips can
lie,
But I must be till I am dead
Only a cry.
Gifts
I gave my first love laughter,
I gave my second tears,
I gave my
third love silence
Through all the years.
My first love gave me singing,
My second eyes to see,
But oh, it
was my third love
Who gave my soul to me.
But Not to Me
The April night is still and sweet
With flowers on every tree;
Peace
comes to them on quiet feet,

But not to me.
My peace is hidden in his breast
Where I shall never be;
Love
comes to-night to all the rest,
But not to me.
Song at Capri
When beauty grows too great to bear
How shall I ease me of its ache,

For beauty more than bitterness
Makes the heart break.
Now while I watch the dreaming sea
With isles like flowers against
her breast,
Only one voice