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Sara Teasdale - Interlude: Songs Out Of Sorrow
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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.

II.  Mastery

I would not have a god come in
To shield me suddenly from sin,
And set my house of life to rights;
Nor angels with bright burning wings
Ordering my earthly thoughts and things;
Rather my own frail guttering lights
Wind blown and nearly beaten out;
Rather the terror of the nights
And long, sick groping after doubt;
Rather be lost than let my soul
Slip vaguely from my own control —
Of my own spirit let me be
In sole though feeble mastery.

III.  Lessons

Unless I learn to ask no help
 From any other soul but mine,
To seek no strength in waving reeds
 Nor shade beneath a straggling pine;
Unless I learn to look at Grief
 Unshrinking from her tear-blind eyes,
And take from Pleasure fearlessly
 Whatever gifts will make me wise —
Unless I learn these things on earth,
Why was I ever given birth?

IV.  Wisdom

When I have ceased to break my wings
Against the faultiness of things,
And learned that compromises wait
Behind each hardly opened gate,
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.

V.  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."

VI.  Wood Song

I heard a wood thrush in the dusk
 Twirl three notes and make a star —
My heart that walked with bitterness
 Came back from very far.

Three shining notes were all he had,
 And yet they made a starry call —
I caught life back against my breast
 And kissed it, scars and all.

VII.  Refuge

From my spirit`s gray defeat,
From my pulse`s flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault`s slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.

For with my singing I can make
A refuge for my spirit`s sake,
A house of shining words, to be
My fragile immortality.
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