A Ballad Of The Two Knights

Sara Teasdale 1884 (St. Louis) – 1933 (New York City)



Two knights rode forth at early dawn
A-seeking maids to wed,
Said one, "My lady must be fair,
With gold hair on her head."
  
Then spake the other knight-at-arms:
"I care not for her face,
But she I love must be a dove
For purity and grace."
  
And each knight blew upon his horn
And went his separate way,
And each knight found a lady-love
Before the fall of day.
  
But she was brown who should have had
The shining yellow hair,
I ween the knights forgot their words
Or else they ceased to care.
  
For he who wanted purity
Brought home a wanton wild,
And when each saw the other knight
I seen that each knight smiled.
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on April 12, 2023

36 sec read
462

Quick analysis:

Scheme XABA XCDC XEDE XBXB XFXF
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 601
Words 124
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

Sara Teasdale

Sara Trevor Teasdale was an American lyrical poet. She was born on august 8, 1884, in St. Louis, Missouri, and after her marriage in 1914 she went by the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger. Teasdale's first poem was published in Reedy's Mirror, a local newspaper, in 1907. Her first collection of poems, Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, was published that same year. Teasdale's second collection of poems, Helen of Troy and Other Poems, was published in 1911. It was well received by critics, who praised its lyrical mastery and romantic subject matter. In the years 1911 to 1914, Teasdale was courted by several men, including poet Vachel Lindsay, who was absolutely in love with her but did not feel that he could provide enough money or stability to keep her satisfied. She chose instead to marry Ernst Filsinger, who had been an admirer of her poetry for a number of years, on December 19, 1914. Teasdale's third poetry collection, Rivers to the Sea, was published in 1915 and was a best seller, being reprinted several times. A year later, in 1916 she moved to New York City with Filsinger, where they resided in an Upper West Side apartment on Central Park West. In 1918, her poetry collection Love Songs (released 1917) won three awards: the Columbia University Poetry Society prize, the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America. Filsinger was away a lot on business which caused a lot of loneliness for Teasdale. In 1929, she moved interstate for three months, thereby satisfying the criteria to gain a divorce. She did not wish to inform Filsinger, and only did so at the insistence of her lawyers as the divorce was going through - Filsinger was shocked and surprised. Post-divorce, Teasdale remained in New York City, living only two blocks away from her old home on Central Park West. She rekindled her friendship with Vachel Lindsay, who was by this time married with children. In 1933, she committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Her friend Vachel Lindsay had committed suicide two years earlier. She is interred in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis. more…

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