After Love (Sara Teasdale)

Browsing at random, I came upon After Love by Sara Teasdale. I, perhaps, should not have chosen this poem to talk about since it is so not my style. I couldn't care less about poems about love or poems that rhyme (in all seriousness). Ah well. Expanding horizons...

Love has surely gone from this couple. They, after all, "meet as other people do." Hmm, no indication of how or why the split occurred. Since she compares herself to the sea and him to the wind it would seem as though he stirred her up with no real purpose and then left as quickly as the sea breezes that pop up and dissipate do.

And I don't know, perhaps words like "surcease" were more in vogue 100 years ago, but to my ears it sounds so unusual. It sounds like a word that was discovered merely to fit the rhyme scheme. That is a big reason why I dislike rhyme in poems.

This is a fine poem, cool technical merit and all (with the rhyming and the syllabics (probably meter too if I cared to look for it)). I just don't care about it. I like more modern sounding poetry and while I think it's great that she wrote about love gone bad and how she feels after love has left, I want to know more of the story. I want a hint as to why the love affair ended.

Favorite line: "You work no miracle for me/ Nor I for you."