This sizable anthology contains the finest poems of Sara Teasdale, one of America's best-loved poets and lyricists, combined from a total of five earlier collections. A poorly child, the young Sara was taught at home in St. Louis, Missouri, until she was aged nine and deemed well enough to be educated in school. An introvert, her childhood home and quarters were designed to ensure privacy and solitude. By the time she was in her mid-teens, Sara had demonstrated an affinity for English verse and soon began to write her earliest poems. The five collections which comprise this anthology were published between 1907 and 1920; these were the years in which Sara Teasdale, as a young woman brimming with creative talent, authored her finest works. She won prizes for her poetry, and had soon gained national renown with her collections proving to be popular and much-endeared to the American public.

Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911) is a poetry collection by Sara Teasdale. The poet's second collection, published several years before she was awarded the 1918 Pulitzer Prize, is a masterful collection of lyric poems meditating on life, romance, and the natural world. Somber and celebratory, symbolic and grounded in experience, Helen of Troy and Other Poems revels in the mystery of existence itself. "Wild flight on flight against the fading dawn / The flames' red wings soar upward duskily. / This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead / That sparkled so the day I saw it first, / And darkened slowly after. I am she / Who loves all beauty-yet I wither it." As Troy burns, Teasdale imagines an impassioned monologue given from the ramparts by the infamous Helen, whose faithlessness in marriage was the catalyst for war in Homer's Iliad. Although she is often seen as a minor character, more an object of male desire than an autonomous subject in her own right, Teasdale refuses to follow the template passed down by generations of poets-mostly men. Her Helen is meditative and intelligent, capable of immense sorrow and full-throated rage alike: "Men's lives shall waste with longing after me, / For I shall be the sum of their desire, / The whole of beauty, never seen again." While acknowledging her role in Troy's destruction, Helen is a tragic figure in Teasdale's poem, a woman who never asked for beauty, let alone for the troubles that beauty brought down on the world. Containing monologue poems from such figures as Sappho, Beatrice, and Guenevere, alongside a series of love poems and finely-crafted sonnets, Helen of Troy and Other Poems is a brilliant collection by a gifted American poet. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Sara Teasdale's Helen of Troy and Other Poems is a classic work of American poetry reimagined for modern readers.

Rivers to the Sea (1915) is a poetry collection by Sara Teasdale. The poet's third collection, published several years before she was awarded the 1918 Pulitzer Prize, is a masterful collection of lyric poems meditating on life, romance, and the natural world. Somber and celebratory, symbolic and grounded in experience, Rivers to the Sea revels in the mystery of existence itself. "The park is filled with night and fog, / The veils are drawn about the world, / The drowsy lights along the paths / Are dim and pearled." "Spring Night," the collection's opening poem, begins in quiet reverie, its speaker appreciating the beauty and mystery of a silent world while suffering from heartache and uncertainty: "Oh, is it not enough to be / Here with this beauty over me? / My throat should ache with praise, and I / Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. / Oh, beauty are you not enough?" A lyric poet to her core, Teasdale explores the highs and lows of love in her own life and in the lives of strangers. Personal and communal, public and private, her work is a testament to a life spent in observance. For Teasdale, a poet who merges an abiding affection for flora and fauna with a critical distance from human affairs, the belief in the life of the world, with or without us, is enough. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Sara Teasdale's Rivers to the Sea is a classic work of American poetry reimagined for modern readers.

Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911) is a poetry collection by Sara Teasdale. The poet's second collection, published several years before she was awarded the 1918 Pulitzer Prize, is a masterful collection of lyric poems meditating on life, romance, and the natural world. Somber and celebratory, symbolic and grounded in experience, Helen of Troy and Other Poems revels in the mystery of existence itself. "Wild flight on flight against the fading dawn / The flames' red wings soar upward duskily. / This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead / That sparkled so the day I saw it first, / And darkened slowly after. I am she / Who loves all beauty-yet I wither it." As Troy burns, Teasdale imagines an impassioned monologue given from the ramparts by the infamous Helen, whose faithlessness in marriage was the catalyst for war in Homer's Iliad. Although she is often seen as a minor character, more an object of male desire than an autonomous subject in her own right, Teasdale refuses to follow the template passed down by generations of poets-mostly men. Her Helen is meditative and intelligent, capable of immense sorrow and full-throated rage alike: "Men's lives shall waste with longing after me, / For I shall be the sum of their desire, / The whole of beauty, never seen again." While acknowledging her role in Troy's destruction, Helen is a tragic figure in Teasdale's poem, a woman who never asked for beauty, let alone for the troubles that beauty brought down on the world. Containing monologue poems from such figures as Sappho, Beatrice, and Guenevere, alongside a series of love poems and finely-crafted sonnets, Helen of Troy and Other Poems is a brilliant collection by a gifted American poet. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Sara Teasdale's Helen of Troy and Other Poems is a classic work of American poetry reimagined for modern readers.

Flame and Shadow (1920) is a poetry collection by Sara Teasdale. The poet's fifth collection, published two years after she won the 1918 Pulitzer Prize, is a masterful collection of lyric poems meditating on life, death, and the natural world. Somber and celebratory, symbolic and grounded in experience, Flame and Shadow revels in the mystery of existence itself. "What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring, / That my songs do not show me at all?" Content to depict the rhythms of nature, the songs of birds, and "the silver light after a storm," Teasdale's poetry dissolves the poet's ego in order to access a deeper well of creative energy: "For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent, / It is my heart that makes my songs, not I." In "There Will Come Soft Rains," a poem born from a decade of war and widespread disease, Teasdale imagines a posthuman world where beauty and harmony continue despite our disappearance: "Robins will wear their feathery fire / Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war..." For Teasdale, a poet who merges an abiding affection for flora and fauna with a critical distance from human affairs, the belief in the life of the world, with or without us, is enough. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Sara Teasdale's Flame and Shadow is a classic work of American poetry reimagined for modern readers.

Love Songs (1917) is a poetry collection by Sara Teasdale. The poet's fourth collection, for which she was awarded the 1918 Pulitzer Prize, is a masterful collection of lyric poems meditating on life, romance, and the natural world. Somber and celebratory, symbolic and grounded in experience, Love Songs revels in the mystery of existence itself. From despair to elation, confusion to security, Sara Teasdale captures the many emotions at work in the hearts of lovers. In "November," she explores the strange feeling that accompany a relationship nearing a mutual ending: "The world is tired, the year is old, / The fading leaves are glad to die, / The wind goes shivering with cold / Where the brown reeds are dry." Beginning her brief verse with an observation of autumn, Teasdale moves into a bittersweet stanza on love grown stagnant, mirroring the world approaching winter: "Our love is dying like the grass, / And we who kissed grow coldly kind, / Half glad to see our old love pass / Like leaves along the wind." So far from spring, the only thing certain is that these lovers must part ways. Refusing to romanticize love, to portray it as wholly positive or negative, the poet crafts a timeless collection on a timeless theme. For Teasdale, a poet who merges an abiding affection for flora and fauna with a critical distance from human affairs, the belief in the life of the world, with or without us, is enough. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Sara Teasdale's Love Songs is a classic work of American poetry reimagined for modern readers.

Rivers to the Sea (1915) is a poetry collection by Sara Teasdale. The poet's third collection, published several years before she was awarded the 1918 Pulitzer Prize, is a masterful collection of lyric poems meditating on life, romance, and the natural world. Somber and celebratory, symbolic and grounded in experience, Rivers to the Sea revels in the mystery of existence itself. "The park is filled with night and fog, / The veils are drawn about the world, / The drowsy lights along the paths / Are dim and pearled." "Spring Night," the collection's opening poem, begins in quiet reverie, its speaker appreciating the beauty and mystery of a silent world while suffering from heartache and uncertainty: "Oh, is it not enough to be / Here with this beauty over me? / My throat should ache with praise, and I / Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. / Oh, beauty are you not enough?" A lyric poet to her core, Teasdale explores the highs and lows of love in her own life and in the lives of strangers. Personal and communal, public and private, her work is a testament to a life spent in observance. For Teasdale, a poet who merges an abiding affection for flora and fauna with a critical distance from human affairs, the belief in the life of the world, with or without us, is enough. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Sara Teasdale's Rivers to the Sea is a classic work of American poetry reimagined for modern readers.