2 poems / Sara Teasdale

"I Thought of You"

I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
   And walking up the long beach all alone;
I heard the waves, breaking in measured thunder
   As you and I once heard their monotone.

Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
   The cold and sparkling silver of the sea —
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
   Before you hear that sound again with me.


On the Dunes

If there is any life when death is over,
   These tawny beaches will know much of me,
I shall come back, as constant and as changeful
   As the unchanging, many-colored sea.

If life was small, if it has made me scornful,
   Forgive me; I shall straighten like a flame
In the great calm of death, and if you want me
   Stand on the sea-ward dunes and call my name.

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
from Flame and Shadow, 1920

[Poems are in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Sara Teasdale biography