The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1920-11-28
The Maturity
OF Sara Teasdale
Reviewed by
JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE.
FLAME AND SHADOW BY Sara
Teasdale. The Macmillan Company.

With the publication of her new
volume, Flame and Shadow" Sara
Teasdale rounds nearly decade of her
work, Helen OF Troy" having been
published in 1911. In the meantime
she has brought out two other coll
lections, Rivers to the Sea" and Love
Songs" the latter being partly re-
printed from her earlier volumes. All
OF these books have turned upon one
dominant theme, that of love, but have
expressed IL not in the old way of fem
mime psychology. but in the new way,
the ever-varying and personal way in
which the modern woman reacts to
life, so that in the wide gamut OF
moods every woman must somewhere
find herself reflected. While the CEN
trail theme of the successive volumes
has, therefore. been the same, evolving
experience has given to each distinct
character until one finds Flame and
Shadow" differing widely from its
predecessors
These are the songs of the woman
and not of the girl. The lyric note
that was so compelling as TO give a
joyous impetus to the earlier volumes
has undergone a subtle transformation
and brought a new music into Miss
Teasdale's work. No doubt her ad-
mirers will miss from this book some
thing Of the earlier impulse; there are
fewer songs that take a winged flight
from the lips and more that finger
while one broods upon them. They
have the meditative, organic rhythms
which Yeats declares one should seek
out as the fit vehicle for the more
complex emotions. We know that
Yeats himself has not always sought
this vehicle successfully, no doubt be-
cause he sought 1t consciously. but
where one finds it employed in Miss
Teasdale's songs it seems to belong to
them quite as much as the more OBJ
vious lyric accent Of the earlier work.
Take, as illustration. two poems from
this volume, the first reprinted from a
small book antedating "Helen Of Troy"
and the second, one of the newer
poems:
UNDERSTANDING.
l understood the rest too well.
And all their thoughts have come
to be
Clear as grey seaweed in the swell
OF sunny shallow sea.
But / have never understood;
Your spirits secret hides like gold
Sunk in Spanish galleon
Ages ago in waters cold.
LET 1T BE FORGOTTEN"
Let 1t be forgotten, as flower is for
gotten.
Forgotten as a fire that once was
singing gold.
Let it be forgotten forever and ever.
Time is kind friend. he will make
us old.
If any one asks. say ii was forgotten
Long and long ago,
AS flower. as fire. as husfed foot
fall
In long forgotten snow.
Both of these are beautiful lyrics and
some may prefer the more sharply
crystallized form of the first, but who
could fail to catch the finer and more
elusive music of the second and to
note now III conveys the spirit OF the
poem? This is an admirable illustra-
ton of the part which rhythm plays in
expressing a mood. for this poem is
purely the expression of subjective
mood of which the whole art Is the
lack Of definition. Throughout the book
one comes constantly upon poems
where more flexible rhythm serves to
convey a note quite different from that
we have come to consider character
istic of Sara Teasdale's work. The
beautiful lines, AT Midnight" ap-
proach, in their slow movement, the
rhythm of prose, but nothing else could
convey so well their import
Now at last have come to see what
life is
Nothing is ever ended. everything
\ only begun.
And the brave victories that seem SO
| splendid
Are never really won.