barter by sara teasdale

“Barter” by Sara Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children’s faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like the curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

No surprise that Teasdale’s work has fallen into obscurity – the rhyme, the cadence, lend her poems a deceptive simplicity. I have come to prefer more difficult poets myself. But there was a time when I lived, longed, “for one white singing hour of peace.”

The difficulty arises AFTER the ecstasy. It’s hard not to fall into bitterness.

I just read a great article by the wife of Gary Hirshberg, CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm Yogurt. She describes life on their New Hampshire farm when they were starting out, sharing the farmhouse with the founder, his wife, and six kids; the hard work, and mostly, the uncertainty of it all. There were many failures and the business teetered on edge of bankruptcy for a while. Yet there’s not a trace of bitterness in her re-telling. You can tell she didn’t like it, the precariousness of life back then, but she was in love, and walking away was never an option.

I think there’s something to hardship; if you can overcome it, it lends your success a certain sweetness. As long as we can put some distance between past and present, as long as there’s no fear of going back, we can remember, even fondly, where we’ve come from.

I don’t think we should barter our future, however.

We have no way of knowing how things will play out. There is no such thing as a sure thing, as Teasdale’s own life evidences. She married a business man, not her true love, the poet Vachel Lindsay. She later (coming to her senses?) divorced.

Both Lindsay and Teasdale died by suicide.

We reject happiness at our peril.

I think …