Weekend Poetry

Today is another two-fer because I missed yesterday. So, two of a similar theme from Sara Teasdale:

After Love

There is no magic anymore,

We meet as other people do,

You work no miracle for me

Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea --

There is no splendor anymore,

I have grown listless as the pool

Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm

And from the tide has found surcease,

It grows more bitter than the sea

For all its peace.

After Parting

Oh, I have sown my love so wide

That he will find it everywhere;

It will awake him in the night,

It will enfold him in the air.

I set my shadow in his sight

And I have winged it with desire,

That it may be a cloud by day,

And in the night a shaft of fire.

I actually really like both of these poems, because they are deceptively simple. There is a lot going on. I like the first one because the line lengths -- and the way they read -- make this poem sound as listless to me as the "pool" Teasdale describes. And the second poem sounds like a terribly elegant homage to stalking, really. It's sort of like reminding the erstwhile lover that he can run but cannot hide... If not for the title, it would be a really touching love poem.

Sara Teasdale was born in 1884 in St. Louis, MO. She was a sickly child, and by all accounts, unhappy in her life. Whether due to illness or unhappiness, she committed suicide in 1933. Sara Teasdale won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1918.