Poetry Spot - Sara Teasdale

A Prayer
by Sara Teasdale

When I am dying, let me know
That I loved the blowing snow
Although it stung like whips;
That I loved all lovely things

And I tried to take their stings
With gay unembittered lips;
That I loved with all my strength,
To my soul's full depth and length,

Careless if my heart must break,
That I sang as children sing
Fitting tunes to everything,
Loving life for its own sake.

American poet Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933) was an extremely sickly child and only began to attend school at the age of 9. She fell in love with a fellow poet, Vachel Lindsay, and the two regularly sent one another love letters, but Teasdale married a rich businessman at the age of 30.

She won the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for poetry among other prestigious awards, but she committed suicide in 1933 by overdosing on sleeping pills, two years after Lindsay also took his life.

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage the youth to take up poetry - a happy career path to follow indeed.