Sara Teasdale — Vignettes Overseas

I Off Gibraltar      BEYOND the sleepy hills of Spain,         The sun goes down in yellow mist,      The sky is fresh with dewy stars          Above a sea of amethyst.      Yet in the city of my love          High noon burns all the heavens bare—      For him the happiness of light,          For me a delicate despair. II Off Algiers      Oh give me neither love nor tears,          Nor dreams that sear the night with fire,     Go lightly on your pilgrimage          Unburdened by desire.      Forget me for a month, a year,          But, oh, beloved, think of me      When unexpected beauty burns          Like sudden sunlight on the sea. III Naples     Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light,      Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight,      Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea,      Naples crowds her million roofs close as close can be;      Round about the mountain's crest a flag of smoke is hung—      Oh when God made Italy he was gay and young! IV Capri      When beauty grows too great to bear          How shall I ease me of its ache,      For beauty more than bitterness          Makes the heart break.      Now while I watch the dreaming sea          With isles like flowers against her breast,      Only one voice in all the world          Could give me rest. V Night Song at Amalfi      I asked the heaven of stars          What I should give my love—      It answered me with silence,          Silence above.     I asked the darkened sea         Down where the fishers go—      It answered me with silence,         Silence below.      Oh, I could give him weeping,          Or I could give him song—     But how can I give silence     My whole life long? VI Ruins of Paestum      On lowlands where the temples lie         The marsh-grass mingles with the flowers,     Only the little songs of birds          Link the unbroken hours.      So in the end, above my heart          Once like the city wild and gay,     The slow white stars will pass by night,         The swift brown birds by day. VII Rome     Oh for the rising moon          Over the roofs of Rome,     And swallows in the dusk          Circling a darkened dome!     Oh for the measured dawns         That pass with folded wings—     How can I let them go         With unremembered things? VIII Florence      The bells ring over the Anno,          Midnight, the long, long chime;      Here in the quivering darkness          I am afraid of time.      Oh, gray bells cease your tolling,         Time takes too much from me,      And yet to rock and river         He gives eternity. IX Villa Serbelloni, Bellaggio      The fountain shivers lightly in the rain,         The laurels drip, the fading roses fall,     The marble satyr plays a mournful strain         That leaves the rainy fragrance musical.      Oh dripping laurel, Phoebus sacred tree,          Would that swift Daphne's lot might come to me,     Then would I still my soul and for an hour          Change to a laurel in the glancing shower. X Stresa      The moon grows out of the hills          A yellow flower,      The lake is a dreamy bride          Who waits her hour.      Beauty has filled my heart,         It can hold no more,     It is full, as the lake is full,         From shore to shore. XI Hamburg     The day that I come home,         What will you find to say,—      Words as light as foam         With laughter light as spray?     Yet say what words you will         The day that I come home;     I shall hear the whole deep ocean         Beating under the foam.