'Wealth Enough For Me'

“I have no riches but my thoughts. Yet these are wealth enough for me.” – Sara Teasdale

 

Winner of the first Pulitzer Prize awarded for poetry, Teasdale was born in St. Louis on this date in    1884. She started writing poetry in her teens as a member of The Potters, a group of writers and artists formed to advance the works of women.  She published her first book, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, in 1907.  It was her fourth collection, Love Poems, that earned her the Pulitzer.  For Saturday’s Poem, here are two of Teasdale’s popular short poems from that collection.

 

 

I Thought Of You

 

I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.

Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea --
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.

 

Water Lilies

 

If you have forgotten water lilies floating
On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,
If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance,
Then you can return and not be afraid.

But if you remember, then turn away forever
To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart,
There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies,
And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your heart.

 

 

 

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