Quote of the Day (Sara Teasdale, on the Homeless on ‘A Winter Night’)

“God pity all the homeless ones,
The beggars pacing to and fro.
God pity all the poor to-night
Who walk the lamp-lit streets of snow.”—American lyric poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), “A Winter Night,” originally published in Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911), reprinted in Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale (1966)
 
Unlike the scene in this poem, what I saw looking out my window last night was steady rain rather than snow. But it looked and sounded dismal—and wet—and with the wind whipping up periodically, it was easy to imagine it being as raw as what Teasdale described.

Quote of the Day (Sara Teasdale, on the Ecstasy of Winter Skaters)

“Across the lake the skaters
Flew to and fro,
With sharp turns weaving
A frail invisible net.
In ecstasy the earth
Drank the silver sunlight;
In ecstasy the skaters
Drank the wine of speed;
In ecstasy we laughed
Drinking the wine of love.”— American poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), “A Winter Bluejay,” in Rivers to the Sea (1915)
 
Well, maybe this is more of a collective urban experience than what Sara Teasdale had in mind when she wrote these verses a little over a century ago. (There wasn’t much room for “the wine of speed” on this crowded rink.)
 
But plenty of people experienced the ecstasy of ice skating when I visited New York’s Bryant Park when I took this photo in February 2018. It’s not quite winter yet, but it’s getting there, and some areas of upstate New York and other northern areas may already be witnessing the kind of scene the poet had in mind.

Quote of the Day (Sara Teasdale, on Spring’s ‘Soft Rains’)

“There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white.”— Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), “There Will Come Soft Rains (War Time),” in The Four Seasons: Poems, edited by J. D. McClatchy (2008)

Quote of the Day (Sara Teasdale, on Broadway Lights)

“Beneath the liquid splendor of the lights

   We live a little ere the charm is spent;

This night is ours, of all the golden nights,

   The pavement an enchanted palace floor,

And Youth the player on the viol, who sent

   A strain of music thru an open door.”—Sara Teasdale, from “Broadway,” in her Rivers to the Sea (1915)

(The image accompanying this post was taken from the 1920s, when the “liquid splendor of the lights” would likely have been even more dramatic than when Teasdale witnessed it a decade before.)