Sara Teasdale “I Am Not Yours

I Am Not Yours I am not yours, not lost in you, Not lost, although I long to be Lost as a candle lit at noon, Lost as a snowflake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still A spirit beautiful and bright, Yet I am I, who long to be Lost as a light is lost in light. Oh plunge me deep in love, put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a rushing wind.

It sounds like the narrator is in love with someone, but that she is very independent, and doesn’t want to lose it by going with her feelings and letting herself fully fall in love. The narrator seems to be saying that she wants to feel the passion that goes with love, the lust that blinds all sense. She also wants to be so deeply loved but she also wants be her own person and not give the rest of who she is to anyone or give up parts of her identity that happens when you get involved with love. The poem is beautifully written and I think it really conveys the struggle that the narrator is having between choosing love and choosing her sense of self and independence. It’s set up in three quatrains in iambic tetrameter, each rhyming abcb, except for the last one, which rhymes blind with wind.

~ by helluvawriter on October 12, 2008.