[Jeff Holt]

Another woman poet who should not be forgotten but who is sadly out of the anthologies and out of print, as far as I know, these days, is Sara Teasdale. From the little that I know of her biography, Teasdale suffered from depression much of her life and finally committed suicide in 1933. While Teasdale did not constantly write out despair, when she did do so, she wrote as one who knew the terrain well.

Here are two excerpts from "II. Interlude: Songs Out of Sorrow" from her "Love Songs" (1917):

I. Spirit's House

From naked stones of agony
I will build a house for me;
As a mason all alone
I will raise it, stone by stone,
And every stone where I have bled
Will show a sign of dusky red.
I have not gone the way in vain,
For I have good of all my pain;
My spirit's quiet house will be
Built of naked stones I trod
On roads where I lost sight of God.

IV. In a Burying Ground

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."