The Solitary

My heart has grown rich with the passing of years,
I have less need now than when I was young
To share myself with every comer
Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.

It is one to me that they come or go
If I have myself and the drive of my will,
And strength to climb on a summer night
And watch the stars swarm over the hill.

Let them think I love them more than I do,
Let them think I care, though I go alone;
If it lifts their pride, what is it to me
Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone.

Sara Teasdale

Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933) was an American lyric poet. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri and her first poem publication was in 1907. Teasdale's style was characterized by clarity and simplicity, often focusing on themes of love, nature, and death. She won the Columbia University Poetry Society Prize for her 1917 collection Love Songs. Unfortunately, she faced severe health issues and depression towards the end of her life, leading to her suicide in 1933.

Sara Teasdale

In A Cuban Garden

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

To Erinna

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

The Wayfarer

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

From The North

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

English

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Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Alone

I am alone, in spite of love,
In spite of all I take and give,
In spite of all your tenderness,
Sometimes I am not glad to live.

I am alone, as though I stood
On the highest peak of the tired gray world,
About me only swirling snow,
Above me, endless space unfurled;

With earth hidden and heaven hidden,
And only my own spirit's pride
To keep me from the peace of those
Who are not lonely, having died.

Sara Teasdale

The Solitary

I have been lonely all my days on earth,
    Living a life within my secret soul,
With mine own springs of sorrow and of mirth,
            Beyond the world's control.

Though sometimes with vain longing I have sought
    To walk the paths where other mortals tread,
To wear the clothes for other mortals wrought,
            And eat the selfsame bread--

Yet have I ever found, when thus I strove
    To mould my life upon the common plan,
That I was furthest from all truth and love,
            And least a living man.

Truth frowned upon my poor hypocrisy,
    Life left my soul, and dwelt but in my sense;
No man could love me, for all men could see
            The hollow vain pretence.

Their clothes sat on me with outlandish air,
    Up...

Robert Fuller Murray

Thoughts

When I am all alone
Envy me most,
Then my thoughts flutter round me
In a glimmering host;

Some dressed in silver,
Some dressed in white,
Each like a taper
Blossoming light;

Most of them merry,
Some of them grave,
Each of them lithe
As willows that wave;

Some bearing violets,
Some bearing bay,
One with a burning rose
Hidden away.

When I am all alone
Envy me then,
For I have better friends
Than women and men.

Sara Teasdale

Compensation

I should be glad of loneliness
And hours that go on broken wings,
A thirsty body, a tired heart
And the unchanging ache of things,

If I could make a single song
As lovely and as full of light,
As hushed and brief as a falling star
On a winter night.

Sara Teasdale

The Tree

Oh to be free of myself,
With nothing left to remember,
To have my heart as bare
As a tree in December;

Resting, as a tree rests
After its leaves are gone,
Waiting no more for a rain at night
Nor for the red at dawn;

But still, oh so still
While the winds come and go,
With no more fear of the hard frost
Or the bright burden of snow;

And heedless, heedless
If anyone pass and see
On the white page of the sky
Its thin black tracery.

Sara Teasdale

Solitude

This is the maiden Solitude, too fair
For mortal eyes to gaze on, she who dwells
In the lone valley where the water wells
Clear from the marble, where the mountain air
Is resinous with pines, and white peaks bare
Their unpolluted bosoms to the stars,
And holy Reverence the passage bars
To meaner souls who seek to enter there;
Only the worshipper at Nature's shrine
May find that maiden waiting to be won,
With broad calm brow and meek eyes of the dove,
May drink the rarer ether all divine,
And, earthly toils and earthly troubles done,
May win the longed-for sweetness of her love.

James Lister Cuthbertson