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.
