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The Long Hill

By Sara Teasdale 1884–1933 Sara Teasdale

I must have passed the crest a while ago

And now I am going down.

Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know—

But the brambles were always catching the hem of my gown.

All the morning I thought how proud it would be

To stand there straight as a queen—

Wrapped in the wind and the sun, with the world under me.

But the air was dull, there was little I could have seen.

It was nearly level along the beaten track

And the brambles caught in my gown—

But it’s no use now to think of turning back,

The rest of the way will be only going down.

September 1919

Source: Poetry (October 2012).

Biography

Sara Teasdale received public admiration for her well-crafted lyrical poetry which centered on a woman's changing perspectives on beauty, love, and death. Many of Teasdale's poems chart developments in her own life, from her experiences as a sheltered young woman in St. Louis, to those as a successful yet increasingly uneasy writer in New York City, to a depressed and disillusioned person who would commit suicide in 1933. . . .

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