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Flame and Shadow
By Sara Teasdale
[Note on text: Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces.
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words or phrases are marked by tildes (~).
Lines longer than 78
characters are broken according to metre, and the continuation is
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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