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Sara Teasdale - From The Sea
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All beauty calls you to me, and you seem, 
Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea, 
To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe 
Here on the ship`s sun-smitten topmost deck, 
With only light between the heavens and me. 
I feel your spirit and I close my eyes, 
Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun, 
The eager whisper and the searching eyes. 
Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face 
Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile 
The blue unbroken circle of the sea. 
Look far away and let me ease my heart 
Of words that beat in it with broken wing. 
Look far away, and if I say too much, 
Forget that I am speaking. Only watch, 
How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest, 
The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave 
Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world.

I am so weak a thing, praise me for this, 
That in some strange way I was strong enough 
To keep my love unuttered and to stand 
Altho` I longed to kneel to you that night 
You looked at me with ever-calling eyes. 
Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love 
You thought it something delicate and free, 
Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind, 
Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam. 
Yet in my heart there was a beating storm 
Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove 
To say too little lest I say too much, 
And from my eyes to drive love`s happy shame. 
Yet when I heard your name the first far time 
It seemed like other names to me, and I 
Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river 
That nears at last its long predestined sea; 
And when you spoke to me, I did not know 
That to my life`s high altar came its priest. 
But now I know between my God and me 
You stand forever, nearer God than I, 
And in your hands with faith and utter joy 
I would that I could lay my woman`s soul.

Oh, my love 
To whom I cannot come with any gift 
Of body or of soul, I pass and go. 
But sometimes when you hear blown back to you 
My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears, 
Know that I sang for you alone to hear, 
And that I wondered if the wind would bring 
To him who tuned my heart its distant song. 
So might a woman who in loneliness 
Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come, 
Wonder if it would please its father`s eyes. 
But long before I ever heard your name, 
Always the undertone`s unchanging note 
In all my singing had prefigured you, 
Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame. 
Yet I was free as an untethered cloud 
In the great space between the sky and sea, 
And might have blown before the wind of joy 
Like a bright banner woven by the sun. 
I did not know the longing in the night— 
You who have waked me cannot give me sleep. 
All things in all the world can rest, but I, 
Even the smooth brief respite of a wave 
When it gives up its broken crown of foam, 
Even that little rest I may not have. 
And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy 
In all the piercing beauty of the world 
I would give up—go blind forevermore, 
Rather than have God blot from out my soul 
Remembrance of your voice that said my name.

For us no starlight stilled the April fields, 
No birds awoke in darkling trees for us, 
Yet where we walked the city`s street that night 
Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring, 
And in our path we left a trail of light 
Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea 
When night submerges in the vessel`s wake 
A heaven of unborn evanescent stars.
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