Wisdom / Sara Teasdale

         
Wisdom

It was a night of early spring,
The winter-sleep was scarcely broken;
Around us shadows and the wind
Listened for what was never spoken.

Though half a score of years are gone,
Spring comes as sharply now as then — 
But if we had it all to do
It would be done the same again.

It was a spring that never came;
But we have lived enough to know
That what we never have, remains;
It is the things we have that go.

---
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
from Dark of the Moon, 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]

Sara Teasdale biography