Sara Teasdale

HERE in the velvet stillness

The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon,

Sleeping in starlight …

A year ago we walked in the jangling city

Together … forgetful.

One by one we crossed the avenues,

Rivers of light, roaring in tumult,

And came to the narrow, knotted streets.

Through the tense crowd

We went aloof, ecstatic, walking in wonder,

Unconscious of our motion.

Forever the foreign people with dark, deep-seeing eyes

Passed us and passed.

Lights and foreign words and foreign faces,

I forgot them all;

I only felt alive, defiant of all death and sorrow,

Sure and elated.

That was the gift you gave me …

The streets grew still more tangled,

And led us at last to water black and glossy,

Flecked here and there with lights, faint and far off.

There on a shabby building was a sign

“The India Wharf” … and we turned back.

I always felt we could have taken ship

And crossed the bright green seas

To dreaming cities set on sacred streams

And palaces

Of ivory and scarlet.