For this weekend’s corner, I looked for a poem about August, it is my birthday month after all. Sara Teasdale is a poet I am unfamiliar with, and I am glad to have found her and this poem. Poets.org describes Teasdale’s work as being characterized by its simplicity and clarity, her use of classical forms, and her passionate and romantic subject matter. I anticipate some poetic exploration. Do you remember my post about Glyn Maxwell’s ‘On Poetry’ in which he paints his four elements of poetry? Solar, parts of a poem that are clearly visible in the sunlight; lunar, the echo and resonance, musical, the musicality of a poem and finally visual, how a poem appears in the white space.
Of the four elements, I was most struck by the musicality and visual texture of this poem, (which is why I have attached the audio link). This is a consequence of form, rhyme and rhythm. The form isn’t rigid, two stanzas, first of 19 lines the second 20 lines, and then a rhyming couplet. The rhyming scheme is as below for the first stanza. There is much use of assonance, which gives the pleasing sounds, almost like a lullaby. There are broad brushstrokes of visual texture in the first stanza. These disappear in the second stanza, the reader is led along
Along a blind and fearful track
For the solar, and lunar elements, the poem is about a Connecticut moonrise, and the poet had made a deliberate decision to start poem after the sunset. However, although the reader is being taken on a early evening walk, it feels that the poet is reaching further. Moonrise, and a walk with darkening hills
…………………………………………………….fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold
Just before the second stanza, the language changes and the colours disappear. The second stanza starts and ends with ‘beauty’
O Beauty, out of many a cup and
Beauty, I have worshipped you
It feels as if the poet has walked back in time, into the romantic period. The shorter lines, rhythm, rhyme and language, seem to reference Blake.
Wakened ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool.
O Beauty, out of many a cup
What started as a moonlit walk seems to be a contemplation of mortality. It feels as if I am hearing Keats voice,
Beauty, I have worshipped you
and this poem seems to finishe as an elegy to his brief and flaming talent
Let this single hour atone
For the theft of all of me.
August Moonrise
The sun was gone, and the moon was coming a
Over the blue Connecticut hills; b
The west was rosy, the east was flushed, c
And over my head the swallows rushed c
This way and that, with changeful wills. b
I heard them twitter and watched them dart d
Now together and now apart d
Like dark petals blown from a tree; e
The maples stamped against the west f
Were black and stately and full of rest, f
And the hazy orange moon grew up g
And slowly changed to yellow gold h
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold h
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold. h
Down the hill I went, and then i
I forgot the ways of men, i
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool j
Wakened ecstasy in me e
On the brink of a shining pool. j
O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made me drunk and wild
Ever since I was a child,
But when have I been sure as now
That no bitterness can bend
And no sorrow wholly bow
One who loves you to the end?
And though I must give my breath
And my laughter all to death,
And my eyes through which joy came,
And my heart, a wavering flame;
If all must leave me and go back
Along a blind and fearful track
So that you can make anew,
Fusing with intenser fire,
Something nearer your desire;
If my soul must go alone
Through a cold infinity,
Or even if it vanish, too,
Beauty, I have worshipped you.
Let this single hour atone
For the theft of all of me.
What are your thoughts and feelings about this poem?
Sara Teasdale This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 1, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets. ©️
https://megaphone.link/POETS7060051740
Sara Trevor Teasdale (later Filsinger; August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933) was an American lyric poet. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and In 1918, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1917 poetry collection Love Songs.
Bonnie Braw Press 