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Summer Night, Riverside
by
Sara Teasdale


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In the wild soft summer darkness
How many and many a night we two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin.
The rail along the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us,
While your kisses and the flowers,
Falling, falling,
Tangled in my hair. . . .
The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.
And now, far off
In the fragrant darkness
The tree is tremulous again with bloom
For June comes back.
To-night what girl
Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair
This year’s blossoms, clinging to its coils?

 

This poem is in the public domain.

 


Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933) was a Missouri-born poet afflicted with poor health from birth. She loved one man but married another, divorced, lost her best friend to suicide, and eventually committed suicide herself. Ironically, a majority of her poems are about love and beauty, and she won the first Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1918. There are some similarities to be drawn between Sara and Emily Dickinson; both were reclusive, both wrote intensely personal poetry that frequently focused on nature, both knew unrequited love.

 


Post New Comment:
dotief@comcast.net:
Man! I love the little time journeys poetry affords me! And what a great poem this is! It made me young again, and in love for the first time. Magic!
Posted 06/29/2011 08:35 AM
LRL:
so lovely in the wild soft summer darkness
Posted 06/29/2011 08:00 AM


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