Sara Teasdale’s speaker imagines giving up poetry as a kind of relief. If she wrote no more poems, she thinks, there would at least be rest. The fantasy is not grand: she would have time to read books in other languages and listen to the long, rolling sound of the sea. The tone is quiet and a little tired, yet not bitter.
As the poem continues, the imagined life becomes more inward. She would take pleasure in animals and in a few people, but her “frosty and half ironic” thoughts would remain entirely her own. That phrase captures the mood best: peaceful solitude with a touch of detachment. The speaker longs for a break from the demands of making art, but even the dream of leisure keeps her company with her own mind.