How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills, how blue!
And many a dancing April
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
May bear the scar of you.
Sara Teasdale sees the white blossoms of the cherry tree and the blue squills as symbols of eternity, since they existed for many centuries before she knew them, and they will still be blooming long after she is gone. She yearns for this same type of eternity, which is denied to her. (The poem indicates that she does not believe in everlasting life for the human soul.) She calls upon the blossoms, flaming in their shimmering beauty, to burn and scar her, to sear their images into her memory so deeply that somehow they will still be with her throughout her “endless sleep.”