Sara Teasdale Quotes

95 Sourced Quotes

It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.

Sara Teasdale
Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty?

Sara Teasdale
No one worth possessing Can be quite possessed; Lay that on your heart, My young angry dear; This truth, this hard and precious stone, Lay it on your hot cheek, Let it hide your tear. Hold it like a crystal When you are alone And gaze in the depths of the icy stone. Long, look long and you will be blessed: No one worth possessing Can be quite possessed.

Sara Teasdale
There is no sign of leaf or bud,
A hush is over everything —
Silent as women wait for love,
The world is waiting for the spring.

Sara Teasdale
When I can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange — my youth.

Sara Teasdale
I have no riches but my thoughts,
Yet these are wealth enough for me.

Sara Teasdale
Sun-swept beaches with a light wind blowing
From the immense blue circle of the sea,
And the soft thunder where long waves whiten —
These were the same for Sappho as for me. Two thousand years — much has gone by forever,
Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men —
But here on the beaches that time passes over
The heart aches now as then.

Sara Teasdale
If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,
If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,
Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,
A lamp in darkness.

Sara Teasdale
With the man I love who loves me not
I walked in the street-lamps' flare —
But oh, the girls who can ask for love
In the lights of Union Square.

Sara Teasdale
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.

Sara Teasdale
Make songs for Death as you would sing to Love —
But you will not assuage him. He alone
Of all the gods will take no gifts from men.

Sara Teasdale
As the waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose,
Float in the garden when no wind blows,
Come to us, go from us, whence no one knows;
So the old tunes float in my mind,
And go from me leaving no trace behind,
Like fragrance borne on the hush of the wind.

Sara Teasdale
We weep before the Blessed Mother's shrine,
To think upon her sorrows, but her joys
What nun could ever know a tithing of?
The precious hours she watched above His sleep
Were worth the fearful anguish of the end.
Yea, lack of love is bitterest of all.

Sara Teasdale
All through the deep blue night The fountain sang alone; It sang to the drowsy heart of the satyr carved in stone. The fountain sang and sang But the satyr never stirred- Only the great white moon In the empty heaven heard.

Sara Teasdale
I send you my thoughts — the air between us is laden,
My thoughts fly in at your window, a flock of wild birds.

Sara Teasdale
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...

Sara Teasdale
I saw above a sea of hills A solitary planet shine, And there was no one, near or far, to keep the world from being mine.

Sara Teasdale
Oh, beauty, are you not enough?
Why am I crying after love?

Sara Teasdale
Life is a frail moth flying
Caught in the web of the years that pass.

Sara Teasdale
This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead
That sparkled so the day I saw it first,
And darkened slowly after. I am she
Who loves all beauty — yet I wither it.

Sara Teasdale
This is the spot where I will lie When life has had enough of me, These are the grasses that will blow Above me like a living sea. These gay old lilies will not shrink To draw their life from death of mine, And I will give my body's fire To make blue flowers on this vine. "O Soul," I said, "have you no tears? Was not the body dear to you?" I heard my soul say carelessly, "The myrtle flowers will grow more blue.

Sara Teasdale
If I am peaceful, I shall see
Beauty's face continually;
Feeding on her wine and bread
I shall be wholly comforted,
For she can make one day for me
Rich as my lost eternity.

Sara Teasdale
One by one, like leaves from a tree,
All my faiths have forsaken me.

Sara Teasdale
I try to catch at many a tune
Like petals of light fallen from the moon,
Broken and bright on a dark lagoon, But they float away — for who can hold
Youth, or perfume or the moon's gold?

Sara Teasdale
But I will turn my eyes from you
As women turn to put away
The jewels they have worn at night
And cannot wear in sober day.

Sara Teasdale