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SUMMER NIGHT, RIVERSIDE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: In the wild soft summer darkness
Last Line: With oil of citronella.
Alternate Author Name(s): F. P. A.
Subject(s): Poetry Readings; Romance; Single People; Bachelors; Unmarried People


IN THE wild soft summer darkness
How many a night we two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin!
The rail along the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us
While your kisses and the flowers,
Falling, falling,
Tangled my hair.

The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.

And now
Far off, far off
The tree is tremulous again with bloom,
For June is here

To-night what girl
When she goes home,
Dreamily, before her mirror, shakes from her hair
This year's blossoms clinging in its coils?
—Sara Teasdale, in The Century.

In the wild, hot summer subway
What time I journeyed home from work, O Sara,
I read your verses.

Free and fetterless as any barefoot girl in Arcady,
And I detrained at One Hundred and Sixteenth Street
And walked
One block west, to Riverside Drive.
I sat upon a bench, avid for Adventure,
Athirst and overyearnful for Romance;
And a girl came along
And I thought of the blossoms clinging in the coils of her hair,
And I said, "Good evening."

She said: "You fresh guys ought to be arrested for mashing."

And so I sat there, senseful that Romance and such
Were not for me.
All that paid attention to me were mosquitoes;
And I went home,
And, dreamily before my mirror,
I anointed myself
With Oil of Citronella.





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