Three Poems by Sara Teasdale

At Night

We are apart; the city grows quiet between us,

She hushes herself, for midnight makes heavy her eyes,

The tangle of traffic is ended, the cars are empty,

Five streets divide us, and on them the moonlight lies.

Oh are you asleep, or lying awake, my lover?

Open your dreams to my love and your heart to my words.

I send you my thoughts — the air between us is laden,

My thoughts fly in at your window, a flock of wild birds.

I Shall Not Care

When I am dead and over me bright April

Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,

Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,

I shall not care

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful

When rain bends down the bough;

And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted

Than you are now.

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

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a wealthy and well-respected family. In poor health all her life, she became one of America’s most popular poets, much admired for her brief, graceful love poetry. Courted by her fellow poet Vachel Lindsay, she chose instead to marry Ernest Filsinger. The couple moved to the Upper West Side of New York shortly after their marriage in 1914 and lived there together until she divorced him in 1929. In England, while working on a biography of Christina Rossetti, she contracted chronic pneumonia. She returned to New York and her health continued to deteriorate. On January 29, 1933, she took an overdose of sleeping pills and committed suicide. She was 48.