Flame and shadow / Sara Teasdale [electronic text]

VII

IN SPRING, SANTA BARBARA

I HAVE been happy two weeks together, My love is coming home to me, Gold and silver is the weather And smooth as lapis is the sea.

The earth has turned its brown to green After three nights of humming rain, And in the valleys peck and preen Linnets with a scarlet stain.

High in the mountains all alone The wild swans whistle on the lakes, But I have been as still as stone, My heart sings only when it breaks.

WHITE FOG

HEAVEN-INVADING hills are drowned In wide moving waves of mist, Phlox before my door are wound In dripping wreaths of amethyst.

Ten feet away the solid earth Changes into melting cloud, There is a hush of pain and mirth, No bird has heart to speak aloud.

Here in a world without a sky, Without the ground, without the sea, The one unchanging thing is I, Myself remains to comfort me.

ARCTURUS

ARCTURUS brings the spring back As surely now as when He rose on eastern islands For Grecian girls and men;

The twilight is as clear a blue, The star as shaken and as bright, And the same thought he gave to them He gives to me to-night.

MOONLIGHT

IT will not hurt me when I am old, A running tide where moonlight burned Will not sting me like silver snakes; The years will make me sad and cold, It is the happy heart that breaks.

The heart asks more than life can give, When that is learned, then all is learned; The waves break fold on jewelled fold, But beauty itself is fugitive, It will not hurt me when I am old.

MORNING SONG

A DIAMOND of a morning Waked me an hour too soon; Dawn had taken in the stars And left the faint white moon.

O white moon, you are lonely, It is the same with me, But we have the world to roam over, Only the lonely are free.

GRAY FOG

A FOG drifts in, the heavy laden Cold white ghost of the sea— One by one the hills go out, The road and the pepper-tree.

I watch the fog float in at the window With the whole world gone blind, Everything, even my longing, drowses, Even the thoughts in my mind.

I put my head on my hands before me, There is nothing left to be done or said, There is nothing to hope for, I am tired, And heavy as the dead.

BELLS

AT six o'clock of an autumn dusk With the sky in the west a rusty red, The bells of the mission down in the valley Cry out that the day is dead.

The first star pricks as sharp as steel— Why am I suddenly so cold? Three bells, each with a separate sound Clang in the valley, wearily tolled.

Bells in Venice, bells at sea, Bells in the valley heavy and slow— There is no place over the crowded world Where I can forget that the days go.

LOVELY CHANCE

O LOVELY chance, what can I do To give my gratefulness to you? You rise between myself and me With a wise persistency; I would have broken body and soul, But by your grace, still I am whole. Many a thing you did to save me, Many a holy gift you gave me, Music and friends and happy love More than my dearest dreaming of; And now in this wide twilight hour With earth and heaven a dark, blue flower, In a humble mood I bless Your wisdom—and your waywardness. You brought me even here, where I

Live on a hill against the sky And look on mountains and the sea And a thin white moon in the pepper tree.