Sara Teasdale’s “An End” is a quiet, sorrowful lyric about closing the door on love. The speaker says she has already said goodbye to what she loves and now has no capacity left for any other happiness. The September rain and cold windowpanes create a mood of damp, gray finality. She does not just lose summer; she deliberately turns it away, insisting that “with my own will” she has vanquished her own heart. That phrase captures both strength and pain: she is the one who made the break, but the cost is a kind of inner death. As the season shifts toward winter, the poem becomes a meditation on chosen loss and the bleakness that follows. The tone is controlled and resigned, yet underneath it there is grief for a warmth that will never return.
An End — Summary
I have no heart for any other joy, The drenched September day turns to depart, And I have said good-bye to what I love; With my own will I vanquished my own heart. On the long wind I hear the winter coming, The window panes are cold and blind with rain; With my own will I turned the summer from me And summer will not come to me again.