Author: Teresa Pelka

• Mine

  MINE by the right of the white election! Mine by the royal seal! Mine by the sign in the scarlet prison Bars cannot conceal! More→

• Bequest

  YOU left me sweet, two legacies, — A legacy of love A Heavenly Father would content, Had He the offer of… More→

• Alter?

  ALTER? When the hills do. Falter? When the sun Question if his glory Be the perfect one. More→

• Suspense

  E LYSIUM is as far as to The very nearest room, If in that room a friend await Felicity or doom. More→

• Surrender

  DOUBT me, my dim companion! Why, God would be content With but a fraction of the love Poured thee without a stint. The whole of me, forever, What more the woman can, — Say quick, that I may dower thee With last delight I own! More→

• If You Were Coming in the Fall

  IF you were coming in the fall, I’d brush the summer by With half a smile and half a spurn, As housewives do a fly. If I could see you in a year, I’d wind the months in balls, And put them each in separate drawers, Until their time befalls. If only centuries delayed, I’d…

• With a Flower

  IHIDE myself within my flower, That wearing on your breast, You, unsuspecting, wear me too — And angels know the rest. More→

• Proof

  T HAT I did always love, I bring thee proof: That till I loved I did not love enough. More→

• Have You Got a Brook

  HAVE you got a brook in your little heart, Where bashful flowers blow, And blushing birds go down to drink, And shadows tremble so? And nobody knows, so still it flows, That any brook is there; And yet your little draught of life Is daily drunken there. More→

• Transplanted

  AS if some little Arctic flower, Upon the polar hem, Went wandering down the latitudes, Until it puzzled came To continents of summer… More→

• The Outlet

  MY river runs to thee: Blue sea, wilt welcome me? My river waits reply. Oh, sea, look graciously! More→

• In Vain

  ICANNOT live with you, It would be life, And life is over there Behind the shelf The sexton keeps the key to, Putting up Our life — his porcelain, Like a cup Discarded of the housewife, Quaint or broken; A newer Sevres pleases, Old ones crack. More→

• Cornhuskers, Prairie

  I was born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.Here between…

• Renunciation

  THERE came a day at summer’s full Entirely for me; I thought that such were for the saints, Where revelations be. The sun, as common, went abroad, The flowers, accustomed, blew, As if no soul the solstice passed That maketh all things new. More→

• Love’s Baptism

  I’M ceded, I’ve stopped being theirs; The name they dropped upon my face With water, in the country church, Is finished using now, And they can put it with my dolls, My childhood, and the string of spools I’ve finished threading, too. Baptized before without the choice, But this time consciously, of grace Unto supremest…

• Resurrection

  IT was a long parting, but the time For interview had come; Before the judgment-seat of God, The last and second time These fleshless lovers met, A heaven in a gaze, A heaven of heavens, the privilege Of one another’s eyes. More→

• Apocalypse

  I’M wife; I’ve finished that, That other state; I’m Czar, I’m woman now: It’s safer so. More→

• The Wife

  SHE to his requirement, dropped The playthings of her life To take the honorable work Of woman and of wife. More→

• Apotheosis

  COME slowly, Eden! Lips unused to thee; Bashful, sip thy jasmines… More→

• Index, Nature

  Links to poems in first print order, New Feet within My Garden Go, May-Flower, Why? More→

• New Feet within My Garden Go

  NEW feet within my garden go, New fingers stir the sod; A troubadour upon the elm Betrays the solitude. More→

• May-Flower

  PINK, small, and punctual, Aromatic, low, Covert in April, Candid in May, Dear to the moss, Known by the knoll… More→

• Why?

  THE murmur of a bee A witchcraft yieldeth me. If any ask me why, ’T were easier to die Than tell. More→

• Perhaps You’d Like to Buy a Flower

  PERHAPS you’d like to buy a flower? But I could never sell. If you would like to borrow Until the daffodil Unties her yellow bonnet… More→

• The Pedigree of Honey

  THE pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee… More→

• 

  A Service of Song

  SOME keep the Sabbath going to church; I keep it staying at home, With a bobolink for a chorister, And an orchard for a dome. More→

• The Bee Is Not Afraid of Me

  THE bee is not afraid of me, I know the butterfly; The pretty people in the woods Receive me cordially. More→

• Summer’s Armies

  SOME rainbow coming from the fair! Some vision of the world Cashmere I confidently see! Or else, a peacock’s purple train, Feather by feather, on the plain Fritters itself away! The dreamy butterflies bestir, Lethargic pools resume the whir Of last year’s sundered tune. From some old fortress on the sun Baronial bees march, one…

• The Grass

  THE grass so little has to do — A sphere of simple green, With only butterflies to brood, And bees to entertain; And stir all day to pretty tunes The breezes fetch along, And hold the sunshine in its lap And bow to everything… More→

• A Little Road Not Made of Man

  ALITTLE road not made of man, Enabled of the eye, Accessible to thill of bee, Or cart of butterfly. More→

• Summer Shower

  ADROP fell on the apple tree, Another on the roof; A half a dozen kissed the eaves, And made the gables laugh. A few went out to help the brook, That went to help the sea. Myself conjectured, Were they pearls, What necklaces could be! More→

• Psalm of the Day

  ASOMETHING in a summer’s day, As slow her flambeaux burn away, Which solemnizes me; A something in a summer’s noon — An azure depth, a wordless tune, Transcending ecstasy; And still within a summer’s night A something so transporting bright, I clap my hands to see; Then veil my too inspecting face, Lest such a…

• The Sea of Sunset

  THIS is the land the sunset washes, These are the banks of the Yellow Sea; Where it rose, or whither it rushes, These are the western mystery! More→

• Purple Clover

  THERE is a flower that bees prefer, And butterflies desire; To gain the purple democrat The humming-birds aspire; And whatsoever insect pass, A honey bears away Proportioned to his several dearth And her capacity. More→

• The Bee

  LIKE trains of cars on tracks of plush I hear the level bee: A jar across the flowers goes, Their velvet masonry Withstands until the sweet assault Their chivalry consumes, While he, victorious, tilts away To vanquish other blooms. More→

• 

  Presentiment

  That long shadow on the lawn Indicative that suns go down…

• As Children Bid the Guest

  AS children bid the guest good-night, And then reluctant turn, My flowers raise their pretty lips, Then put their nightgowns on. More→

• Angels, in the Early Morning

  ANGELS, in the early morning, May be seen the dews among; Stooping, plucking, smiling, flying: Do the buds to them belong? More→

• So Bashful

  SO bashful, when I spied her, So pretty, so ashamed! So hidden in her leaflets, Lest anybody find… More→

• Two Worlds

  IT makes no difference abroad — The seasons fit the same, The mornings blossom into noons, And split their pods of flame. More→

• The Mountain

  THE mountain sat upon the plain In his eternal chair, His observation omnifold, His inquest everywhere. More→

• A Day

  I’LL tell you how the sun rose — A ribbon at a time! The steeples swam in amethyst, The news like squirrels ran! The hills untied their bonnets, The bobolinks begun; Then I said softly to myself, “That must have been the sun!” More→

• Butterfly’s Assumption-Gown

  THE butterfly’s assumption-gown, In chrysoprase apartments hung, This afternoon put on. More→

• The Wind

  OF all the sounds despatched abroad, There’s not a charge to me Like that old measure in the boughs, That phraseless melody The wind does, working like a hand Whose fingers brush the sky, Then quiver down, with tufts of tune Permitted gods and me. When winds go round and round in bands, And thrum…

• Death and Life

  APPARENTLY with no surprise To any happy flower, The frost beheads it at its play In accidental power. More→

• ’T Was Later

  ’TWAS later, when the summer went Than when the cricket came, And yet we knew that gentle clock Meant nought but going home. More→

• Indian Summer

  THESE are the days when birds come back, A very few, a bird or two, To take a backward look. These are the days when skies put on The old, old sophistries of June, — A blue and gold mistake. More→

• Autumn

  THE morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry’s cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town. More→

• Beclouded

  THE sky is low, the clouds are mean, A travelling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates, if it will go. More→

• The Hemlock

  ITHINK the hemlock likes to stand Upon a marge of snow; It suits his own austerity, And satisfies an awe That men must slake in wilderness, Or in the desert cloy — An instinct for the hoar, the bald, Lapland’s necessity. More→