Songs in a Hospital: The Broken Field

Sara Teasdale

My soul is a dark ploughed field

    In the cold rain;

My soul is a broken field

    Ploughed by pain.


Where windy grass and flowers

    Were growing,

The field lies broken now

    For another sowing.


Great Sower, when you tread

    My field again,

Scatter the furrows there

    With better grain.


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.
Originally published:
July 1, 1916

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