Sara Teasdale, "Since There is No Escape"

Since there is no escape, since at the end

    My body will be utterly destroyed,

This hand I love as I have loved a friend,

    This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;

Since there is no escape even for me

    Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:

The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea

    And hours alone too still and sure for prayer—

Since darkness waits for me, then all the more

Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore

    In pride, and let me sing with my last breath;

In these few hours of light I lift my head;

Life is my lover—I shall leave the dead

    If there is any way to baffle death.

This poem has one of those opening lines that gets stuck in my head like a song lyrics. The rhythm and repetition do it. "Since there is no escape, since at the end...Since there is no escape, since at the end..."


Line five seems very human to me. Yes, there is no escape generally, theoretically, for humans - the first line affirms that, we all know that. The more difficult fact to accept is that there is no escape "even for me." None of us is an exception. 


"The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea" - is this conventional? Could Teasdale have thought of more specific examples? Don't we all love the scent of flowers in the rain, the sea? Maybe. But maybe it doesn't lack power for being conventional. 


Interesting that the poem is only thirteen lines. Teasdale was one line short of making a sonnet. She even has the turn after the octet. 


The switching of the rhyme scheme after the octet quickens the pace. It's as if you trip a bit as you approach the climax. "All the more / let me go down as waves sweep to the shore"


Even at the end, after admitting that there is no escape even for her, she insists on adding the possibility that there is some way to "baffle death." That there is some escape.