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Flame and Shadow
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was an American lyrical poet. Teasdale's major themes were love, nature's beauty, and death, and her poems were much loved during the early 20th century. She won the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America for her volume, Love Songs. Her style and lyricism are well illustrated in her poem, Spring Night (1915), from that collection. She was influenced by the British poet Christina Rossetti. Teasdale was very much a product of her Victorian upbringing and was never able to experience in life the passion that she expressed in her poetry. A common urban legend surrounds Teasdale's 1933 suicide claims that her poem, I Shall Not Care was penned as a suicide note to a former lover. However, the poem was actually first published in her 1915 collection Rivers to the Sea, a full 18 years before her suicide. Her last collection of verse, Strange Victory, was published posthumously in 1933. Amongst her other works are Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911), Love Songs (1917), Vignettes of Italy (1919) and Flame and Shadow (1920).
56 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1920
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About the author
Sara Teasdale
208 books285 followersSara Teasdale was an American lyrical poet. She was born Sara Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri, and after her marriage in 1914 she went by the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger.
Teasdale's first poem was published in Reedy's Mirror, a local newspaper, in 1907. Her first collection of poems, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, was published that same year.
Teasdale's second collection of poems, Helen of Troy and Other Poems, was published in 1911. It was well received by critics, who praised its lyrical mastery and romantic subject matter.
In the years 1911 to 1914, Teasdale was courted by several men, including poet Vachel Lindsay, who was absolutely in love with her but did not feel that he could provide enough money or stability to keep her satisfied. She chose instead to marry Ernst Filsinger, who had been an admirer of her poetry for a number of years, on December 19, 1914.
Teasdale's third poetry collection, Rivers to the Sea, was published in 1915 and was a best seller, being reprinted several times. A year later, in 1916 she moved to New York City with Filsinger, where they resided in an Upper West Side apartment on Central Park West.
In 1918, her poetry collection Love Songs (released 1917) won three awards: the Columbia University Poetry Society prize, the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America.
Filsinger was away a lot on business which caused a lot of loneliness for Teasdale. In 1929, she moved interstate for three months, thereby satisfying the criteria to gain a divorce. She did not wish to inform Filsinger, and only did so at the insistence of her lawyers as the divorce was going through - Filsinger was shocked and surprised.
Post-divorce, Teasdale remained in New York City, living only two blocks away from her old home on Central Park West. She rekindled her friendship with Vachel Lindsay, who was by this time married with children.
In 1933, she committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Her friend Vachel Lindsay had committed suicide two years earlier. She is interred in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.
-taken from: Wikipedia
Teasdale's first poem was published in Reedy's Mirror, a local newspaper, in 1907. Her first collection of poems, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, was published that same year.
Teasdale's second collection of poems, Helen of Troy and Other Poems, was published in 1911. It was well received by critics, who praised its lyrical mastery and romantic subject matter.
In the years 1911 to 1914, Teasdale was courted by several men, including poet Vachel Lindsay, who was absolutely in love with her but did not feel that he could provide enough money or stability to keep her satisfied. She chose instead to marry Ernst Filsinger, who had been an admirer of her poetry for a number of years, on December 19, 1914.
Teasdale's third poetry collection, Rivers to the Sea, was published in 1915 and was a best seller, being reprinted several times. A year later, in 1916 she moved to New York City with Filsinger, where they resided in an Upper West Side apartment on Central Park West.
In 1918, her poetry collection Love Songs (released 1917) won three awards: the Columbia University Poetry Society prize, the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America.
Filsinger was away a lot on business which caused a lot of loneliness for Teasdale. In 1929, she moved interstate for three months, thereby satisfying the criteria to gain a divorce. She did not wish to inform Filsinger, and only did so at the insistence of her lawyers as the divorce was going through - Filsinger was shocked and surprised.
Post-divorce, Teasdale remained in New York City, living only two blocks away from her old home on Central Park West. She rekindled her friendship with Vachel Lindsay, who was by this time married with children.
In 1933, she committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Her friend Vachel Lindsay had committed suicide two years earlier. She is interred in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.
-taken from: Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
June 7, 2021
This book is in the public domain. Available here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/...
I like the timelessness of Sarah Teasdale's poetry. Many poems about life, death and beauty, though "beauty" for her meant something more transendental and majestic than it's basic meaning in 2021. Quite a lot of if it has to do with witnessing nature and natural phenomenon.
There are some love poems in this collection, which I found bland and unremarkable. They are the worst poems in the collection in my opinion. The poems meditating on death and time are the best. I can't help it, I like death poetry. Maybe there is no surprise that Sara Teasdale killed herself, when see in her poems how often she asks herself if she is ready to die.
She wrote in a minimal way, often with rhyme. Sometimes her style seems too simple, and her poetry passes over me, but other times it's like a clean, direct message, told to you in a song. No matter how dark the topic, it always comes across as lighthearted.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/...
I like the timelessness of Sarah Teasdale's poetry. Many poems about life, death and beauty, though "beauty" for her meant something more transendental and majestic than it's basic meaning in 2021. Quite a lot of if it has to do with witnessing nature and natural phenomenon.
There are some love poems in this collection, which I found bland and unremarkable. They are the worst poems in the collection in my opinion. The poems meditating on death and time are the best. I can't help it, I like death poetry. Maybe there is no surprise that Sara Teasdale killed herself, when see in her poems how often she asks herself if she is ready to die.
What have I to fear in life or death
Who have known three things: the kiss in the night,
The white flying joy when a song is born,
And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.
She wrote in a minimal way, often with rhyme. Sometimes her style seems too simple, and her poetry passes over me, but other times it's like a clean, direct message, told to you in a song. No matter how dark the topic, it always comes across as lighthearted.
I know many things,
But the years come and go,
I shall die not knowing
The thing I long to know.
June 21, 2011
Number three. My heart broke for her sadness and pain in this book so much. I wanted to reach through the ink and the fibers, through time, to stroke her fingers or her cheek, to bring her sunshine and bade her to see the light we always see shining through her eyes and faith even in the mentions of pain. So, so beautiful the whole way.
October 19, 2021
Now in the public domain, this collection of Teasdale's followed her collection Love Songs, which famously won the first-ever Pulitzer awarded for poetry, in 1918. Many of the poems haven't held up especially well; still, there are fine lines, such as these from "On the Dunes":
"If life was small, if it has made me scornful,
Forgive me; I shall straighten like a flame
In the great calm of death...."
Also, poems like Teasdale's "Open Windows" presage the contemporary surge in poetry about living with chronic pain and chronic illness, contrasting the experiences of those living without pain and those living with it in this pithy stanza:
"They are the runners in the sun,
Breathless and blinded by the race,
But we are watchers in the shade
Who speak with Wonder face to face."
There are a couple extended metaphors in this book that are strikingly fresh and good, as in the poem "Driftwood," where Teasdale uses the following terms to evoke how her past romantic relationships have shaped her present selfhood:
"As the driftwood burning
Learned its jewelled blaze
From the sea's blue splendor
Of colored nights and days."
And in the poem "The Net," where she laments language's inability to fully capture the object it wants to describe:
"It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea."
[That blue splendid sea again!]
Another electrically tight moment occurs in "Blue Squills," a particularly effective embodiment of Teasdale's recurring theme of beauty's role as a counterweight to, or atonement for, death (also a favorite theme of Millay, who would win the Pulitzer a couple years later):
"Oh burn me with your beauty, then,....
Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
May bear the scar of you."
"If life was small, if it has made me scornful,
Forgive me; I shall straighten like a flame
In the great calm of death...."
Also, poems like Teasdale's "Open Windows" presage the contemporary surge in poetry about living with chronic pain and chronic illness, contrasting the experiences of those living without pain and those living with it in this pithy stanza:
"They are the runners in the sun,
Breathless and blinded by the race,
But we are watchers in the shade
Who speak with Wonder face to face."
There are a couple extended metaphors in this book that are strikingly fresh and good, as in the poem "Driftwood," where Teasdale uses the following terms to evoke how her past romantic relationships have shaped her present selfhood:
"As the driftwood burning
Learned its jewelled blaze
From the sea's blue splendor
Of colored nights and days."
And in the poem "The Net," where she laments language's inability to fully capture the object it wants to describe:
"It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea."
[That blue splendid sea again!]
Another electrically tight moment occurs in "Blue Squills," a particularly effective embodiment of Teasdale's recurring theme of beauty's role as a counterweight to, or atonement for, death (also a favorite theme of Millay, who would win the Pulitzer a couple years later):
"Oh burn me with your beauty, then,....
Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
May bear the scar of you."
July 6, 2015
My first encounter with sara teasdale, a very underrated poet In my opinion, was with the poem "moonlight"
"The waves break fold on jewelled fold,
But beauty itself is fugitive,
It will not hurt me when I am old. "
and I fell in love.
it took me 2 years to read anything by her though, and i do regret wasting that time.
if i were to look at poetry in the broad sense, in the sort of critical assement I dont think i would say miss teasdale
brought something utterly unique and groundbreaking but i think she brought what, to me, and to a lot of people, is the essence of good poetry, which is, humanity.
her poems are deeply self reflective they give you the unmanic, unpaniced, regular soft human sorrow of a sensitive person, not a mentally ill one, i dont think, only a very emotionally intelligent one, which was very refreshing, like a friend who just seems to think and feel a lot, and say it in such good sentence.
it felt like someone taking a biopsy of human emotional waves and building them so simply.mostly, it felt like just plain sweet sounding confessions.
I will leave you with one of my favorites:
Heart Song ( a poem about poetry)
"My heart cried like a beaten child
Ceaselessly all night long;
I had to take my own cries
And thread them into a song.
One was a cry at black midnight
And one when the first cock crew --
My heart was like a beaten child,
But no one ever knew.
Life, you have put me in your debt
And I must serve you long --
But oh, the debt is terrible
That must be paid in song."
"The waves break fold on jewelled fold,
But beauty itself is fugitive,
It will not hurt me when I am old. "
and I fell in love.
it took me 2 years to read anything by her though, and i do regret wasting that time.
if i were to look at poetry in the broad sense, in the sort of critical assement I dont think i would say miss teasdale
brought something utterly unique and groundbreaking but i think she brought what, to me, and to a lot of people, is the essence of good poetry, which is, humanity.
her poems are deeply self reflective they give you the unmanic, unpaniced, regular soft human sorrow of a sensitive person, not a mentally ill one, i dont think, only a very emotionally intelligent one, which was very refreshing, like a friend who just seems to think and feel a lot, and say it in such good sentence.
it felt like someone taking a biopsy of human emotional waves and building them so simply.mostly, it felt like just plain sweet sounding confessions.
I will leave you with one of my favorites:
Heart Song ( a poem about poetry)
"My heart cried like a beaten child
Ceaselessly all night long;
I had to take my own cries
And thread them into a song.
One was a cry at black midnight
And one when the first cock crew --
My heart was like a beaten child,
But no one ever knew.
Life, you have put me in your debt
And I must serve you long --
But oh, the debt is terrible
That must be paid in song."
September 25, 2014
I can see why Sara Teasdale was so popular in her time. Her poems run the gamut from light and romance-y to dark and full of death. It's chilling when you realize how many of her poems mention death, considering she committed suicide in 1933.
September 28, 2012
I like free-verse poetry. This collection made me reconsider form. I enjoyed the pace of these poems. I read most of them aloud after my first read. I even enjoyed the rhyming! The musicality of the form was pleasing, and it showed a true control of language. I will not shy away from form again. But appreciation makes a critic. While I enjoyed most of Teasdale’s format choices, her lines could be too long at times. It threw off the rhythm. I also felt she relied on slant rhyme too much. The content of these poems was also intriguing. This small collection discusses the concept of being alive, nature, love, society, and war. I especially enjoyed her observations of life—that it is suffering, but beauty makes it worth it. Her poetry about her lovers was sad and moving. I found some of the poetry that mused only on nature to be meaningless and repetitive. It was these poems that made this volume seem simple at times. The organization of these poems into twelve sections was really well done—subtle. Overall, I enjoyed this collection and would like to read more of her work in the future.
December 10, 2021
Lovely Chance
O Lovely chance, what can I do
To give my gratefulness to you?
You rise between myself and me,
With a wise persistency.
I would have broken body and soul,
But by your grace, still I am whole.
Many a thing you did to save me,
Many a holy gift you gave me.
Music and friends and happy love,
More than my dearest dreaming of.
And now in this wide twilight hour,
With earth and heaven a dark, blue flower.
In a humble mood I bless,
Your wisdom-and your waywardness.
You brought me here, where I
Live on a hill against the sky;
And look on mountains and the sea,
And a thin white moon in the pepper tree.
Let It Be Forgotten
Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold.
Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.
If anyone asks, say it was forgotten,
Long and long ago.
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.
October 27, 2019
3 3/4 stars
March 27, 2020
While I didn't love the overall tone of the book, there were enough individual poems here that I really liked to rate the book four stars.
February 13, 2025
Isn't this poem so heartbreakingly beautiful and sad??
Alone
I am alone, in spite of love,
In spite of all I take and give—
In spite of all your tenderness,
Sometimes I am not glad to live.
I am alone, as though I stood
On the highest peak of the tired gray world,
About me only swirling snow,
Above me, endless space unfurled;
With earth hidden and heaven hidden,
And only my own spirit's pride
To keep me from the peace of those
Who are not lonely, having died.
This one is not sad and so gorgeous:
The Coin
Into my heart’s treasury
I slipped a coin
That time cannot take
Nor a thief purloin,
Oh better than the minting
Of a gold-crowned king
Is the safe-kept memory
Of a lovely thing.
!!!! Such beauty.
Alone
I am alone, in spite of love,
In spite of all I take and give—
In spite of all your tenderness,
Sometimes I am not glad to live.
I am alone, as though I stood
On the highest peak of the tired gray world,
About me only swirling snow,
Above me, endless space unfurled;
With earth hidden and heaven hidden,
And only my own spirit's pride
To keep me from the peace of those
Who are not lonely, having died.
This one is not sad and so gorgeous:
The Coin
Into my heart’s treasury
I slipped a coin
That time cannot take
Nor a thief purloin,
Oh better than the minting
Of a gold-crowned king
Is the safe-kept memory
Of a lovely thing.
!!!! Such beauty.
January 16, 2022
3.5 Stars
I have always struggled with reading poetry and plays. Both are better absorbed, for me at least, by hearing or seeing the work performed. I guess I am not intellectual enough to get the deeper meaning associated with this type of writing. Some friends and family might argue that, but the fact is I am a simple person who sees the world mostly in terms of black and white. For me poetry is often ambiguous, rarely black or white.
I first became aware of Sara Teasdale after rearning the short story There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury it's based on a poem by Teasdale. Flame and Shadow contains many poems that appealed to me, especially Soft Rains. Perhaps poetry is growing on me or maybe Teasdale is just more to my understanding.
I have always struggled with reading poetry and plays. Both are better absorbed, for me at least, by hearing or seeing the work performed. I guess I am not intellectual enough to get the deeper meaning associated with this type of writing. Some friends and family might argue that, but the fact is I am a simple person who sees the world mostly in terms of black and white. For me poetry is often ambiguous, rarely black or white.
I first became aware of Sara Teasdale after rearning the short story There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury it's based on a poem by Teasdale. Flame and Shadow contains many poems that appealed to me, especially Soft Rains. Perhaps poetry is growing on me or maybe Teasdale is just more to my understanding.
December 24, 2021
Nunca habia escuchado de Sara Teasdale hasta que leí su nombre en Nuestra Parte de Noche y como solo encontre un pdf en inglés no me extraña. Me encantó este volumen, me pareció una poesía muy sensible, evoca imagenes muy bellas y conectadas a la naturaleza. Es melancólica, para variar (sarcasmo), y aunque no rebosa optimismo sí puedo ver serenidad en esa melancolía y una percepción de la belleza del mundo en los versos que hablan de los prados, los árboles, el río. Una poesía muy estadounidense, diría yo
January 26, 2018
Poetry. Usually my blind spot but this selection of poems was very good. Short poems of infinite clarity, finely distilling emotions and experiences. Overall a touch on the depressing side but beautiful. However I would advise avoiding this edition. Poorly laid out with little to no differentiation between the end of one poem and the title of the next and then none to its first line. Also some lines were even in the previous section.
March 23, 2021
Sara Teasdale was such a great poet. If you could take the best natury goodness of Mary Oliver and the best cutting to the bone wit of Dorothy Parker, then meld those two into one poet, it would be Sara Teasdale.
"There Will Come Soft Rains" gives me chills every time I read it -- equal parts comfort and dread with the knowledge that this world could well go on without us humans.
"There Will Come Soft Rains" gives me chills every time I read it -- equal parts comfort and dread with the knowledge that this world could well go on without us humans.
December 26, 2024
this collection contains some of my all-time favorites of teasdale’s poetry; many i had known before reading the collection, many i read for the first time here. her work is so vivid and beautiful, and for how existential and dark much of it is, the depths of her emotions are always inspiring. i love sara teasdale.
December 30, 2025
“Blue Squills”
“Driftwood”
“I have loved hours at sea”
“Places”
“The Coin”
“Oh you are coming”
“Gray Eyes”
“The Net”
“The Mystery”
“The New Moon”
“The Wine”
“Morning Song”
“There will come soft rains”
“Winter Stars”
“A Boy”
“Winter Dusk”
“On the Dunes”
“Spray”
“Thoughts”
“Dust”
“The Tree”
“The Wind In The Hemlock”
“Driftwood”
“I have loved hours at sea”
“Places”
“The Coin”
“Oh you are coming”
“Gray Eyes”
“The Net”
“The Mystery”
“The New Moon”
“The Wine”
“Morning Song”
“There will come soft rains”
“Winter Stars”
“A Boy”
“Winter Dusk”
“On the Dunes”
“Spray”
“Thoughts”
“Dust”
“The Tree”
“The Wind In The Hemlock”
December 9, 2023
I love the way Sara Teasdale writes - her sense for rhythm is unmatched, each of her poems is like a dance.
There were some poems that quite literally made me gasp when I read them. She has the tendency to put very powerful (and sometimes gut-wrenching) words as the last two verses/lines.
There were some poems that quite literally made me gasp when I read them. She has the tendency to put very powerful (and sometimes gut-wrenching) words as the last two verses/lines.
December 30, 2023
“My heart is heavy with many a song
Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,
But I can never give you one —
My songs do not belong to me.
Yet in the evening, in the dusk
When moths go to and fro,
In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,
Take it, no one will know.”
Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,
But I can never give you one —
My songs do not belong to me.
Yet in the evening, in the dusk
When moths go to and fro,
In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,
Take it, no one will know.”
November 29, 2017
Just the poetry, unadorned with intro or notes. The first few poems are really mannered, but Teasdale hit her stride eventually. Berneis does not Emote, which is nice.
May 3, 2019
l0vely
October 23, 2019
Beautiful, lyrical, and heartwarming
April 10, 2020
Love this woman's work
April 13, 2020
Reading and re-reading this beautiful lyrical poetry during the Covid pandemic has given me a place to go, a refuge of peace and quiet.
December 28, 2020
sara teasdale's poetry is nothing less of perfection
"there will come soft rains" is beautiful and calming, yet tragic
"there will come soft rains" is beautiful and calming, yet tragic
October 29, 2021
"It is strange how often a heart must be broken / Before the years can make it wise."
May 21, 2023
Beautiful, lyrical imagery.
July 28, 2024
*owned, stamped*
This came out of nowhere. Honestly, I don't even remember buying this. I needed something short and with feeling, so poetry seemed the way to go.
I liked this a lot.
Simple, deeply felt, heavily annotated, it was just what I wanted.
I was also amazed that my copy was also annotated and commented on by an owner in 1928.
I'll be looking for more of this author's works.
This came out of nowhere. Honestly, I don't even remember buying this. I needed something short and with feeling, so poetry seemed the way to go.
I liked this a lot.
Simple, deeply felt, heavily annotated, it was just what I wanted.
I was also amazed that my copy was also annotated and commented on by an owner in 1928.
I'll be looking for more of this author's works.
October 4, 2022
✔️Published in 1911.
Sara Teasdale's works need to be taught more in school. She is one of the United States' best poets, and "Flame and Shadow" showcases that. A good majority of her poems have a sad, dark slant to them, but each work is masterful. One of my favorite poems in this collection is Blue Squills.
Blue Squills remains a favorite poem by Sara Teasdale, as it was in 2008. I re-read this collection of her poems, and I like them as much as I did when I first read them. These are deep and soulful.
Two of my favorites follow:
🟣Kindle version.
Sara Teasdale's works need to be taught more in school. She is one of the United States' best poets, and "Flame and Shadow" showcases that. A good majority of her poems have a sad, dark slant to them, but each work is masterful. One of my favorite poems in this collection is Blue Squills.
Blue Squills remains a favorite poem by Sara Teasdale, as it was in 2008. I re-read this collection of her poems, and I like them as much as I did when I first read them. These are deep and soulful.
Two of my favorites follow:
Blue Squills
How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills, how blue!
And many a dancing April
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
May bear the scar of you.
Day and Night
In Warsaw in Poland
Half the world away,
The one I love best of all
Thought of me to-day;
I know, for I went
Winged as a bird,
In the wide flowing wind
His own voice I heard;
His arms were round me
In a ferny place,
I looked in the pool
And there was his face—
But now it is night
And the cold stars say:
"Warsaw in Poland
Is half the world away."
🟣Kindle version.
January 23, 2013
I would never have touched this book had it not been for Ray Bradbury. He included the poem, There Will Come Soft Rains, which intrigued me. It ultimately led me to finding this work by Sara Teasdale.
Generally, I liked her poems. They were written in the early part of the 20th century, very near World War I. It was really cool to see the influence of the times touch the various poems within this work.
If her work is reflective of her personality, Sara was so very lonely at times, sick at other times, and heartbroken more than once. It was neat to contrast her poems where she was lovestruck, versus the ones where her heart ached. She clearly loved nature and she seemed to write a lot about death.
Overall, the poems were pretty good, though the form does get a little monotonous after a while. I'd recommend this to anyone who would like to enjoy a little poetry with at least one pretty cool sci-fi connection. There's a good chance I might look for more of Sara's works.
Generally, I liked her poems. They were written in the early part of the 20th century, very near World War I. It was really cool to see the influence of the times touch the various poems within this work.
If her work is reflective of her personality, Sara was so very lonely at times, sick at other times, and heartbroken more than once. It was neat to contrast her poems where she was lovestruck, versus the ones where her heart ached. She clearly loved nature and she seemed to write a lot about death.
Overall, the poems were pretty good, though the form does get a little monotonous after a while. I'd recommend this to anyone who would like to enjoy a little poetry with at least one pretty cool sci-fi connection. There's a good chance I might look for more of Sara's works.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews