by Mechgold

Created on: April 20, 2008   Last Updated: March 08, 2012

Sarah Trevor Teasdale, recognized worldwide as an American lyrical poet. Inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, in 1994. Born on August 8, 1884 in St. Louis Missouri, the youngest of Four in a wealthy family of Mary Elizabeth Willard and John Warren Teasdale. A winner of the Columbia University Poetry Society prize, the forerunner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry an annual prize of the Poetry Society of America for her volume, Love Songs, In 1918.

Traveled in Europe and the Middle East (19051907}. Sarah was sickly, so she was home schooled at the start, until she was nine. When she was ten, Her parents sent her to Miss Ellen Dean Lockwood's school for boys and girls for her first formal school. When she was fourteen, she went to Mary Institute. She didn't graduate there, but switched to Hosmer Hall when she was fifteen. There, she wrote her first published poem "Reedy's Mirror", and it was published in a local newspaper in 1907. In 1911, her second collection, "Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems" was published. She published many other collections including "Rivers to the Sea"(1915}, "Love Songs"(1917), "Flame and Shadow"(1920}, "Dark of the Moon", "Stars To-night", and finally, "Strange Victory"{1933}.
Married her sweetheart Ernst Filsinger in 1914, but they divorced in 1929, and lived the rest of her life only for her poetry. In 1933, Sara Teasdale caught chronic pneumonia and afflicted with bouts of depression, took an overdose of sleeping peels and committed suicide and died at age 48 in New York, NY on January 29, 1933. Interred in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis. Her final book of poetry was published that year.

Sarah Teasdale's works continue to be an inspiration to poetry lovers, and was shown admiration all over the world. She appreciates the beauty of life and was reflected in her poetry.
I Personally acknowledge her writings as one the finest lyrical poems in his era. Tears of Joy is one of the first experienced I had, when I was recognized and applauded after reciting one of her poem in front of my class, when I was in First Year high School, her poem entitled "Barter". I received the highest mark in Poetry that time. I thank her for sharing his poem to one and all, and I would like to share it with you.

Barter
By: Sarah 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 a 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

Reference & Source
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Teasdale
http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/Cambridge/entries/007/ Sara-Teasdale.html

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