From the Archives

Song-Making

Sara Teasdale

My heart cried like a beaten child

Ceaselessly all night long;

I had to take my own heart cries

And thread them into a song.

One was a sob at black midnight

And one when the first cock crew—

My heart cried like a beaten child,

But no one ever knew.

Life, you have put me in your debt

And I must serve you late and long—

But oh, the debt is terrible

That must be paid in song.

The Yale Review is committed to publishing pieces from its archive as they originally appeared, without alterations to spelling, content, or style. Occasionally, errors creep in due to the digitization process; we work to correct these errors as we find them. You can email [email protected] with any you find.

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) was an American poet. She was the first person to win the Poetry Society of America Prize, later renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, for her 1917 poetry collection Love Songs.

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