dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Sara Teasdale

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Lessons

Sara Teasdale

From “Songs out of Stress”

UNLESS I learn to ask no help

From any other soul but mine,

To seek no strength in waving reeds

Nor shade beneath a straggling pine;

Unless I learn to look at Grief

Unshrinking from her tear-blind eyes,

And take from Pleasure fearlessly

Whatever gifts will make me wise—

Unless I learn these things on earth

Why was I ever given birth?