Sara Teasdale’s speaker imagines giving up the busy, contentious human world: its wars, its “loud new wonders,” its changing cities, customs, and creeds. She says she could let all that pass. What stops her is not ambition or attachment to society but the quiet beauty of the natural world—a winter dusk full of stars and summer rain blowing silver over jewel-weeds. The poem sets up a contrast between noisy, shifting human life and enduring, delicate moments in nature. The mood is wistful and inward, almost like a daydream of renunciation. The speaker does not rage against the world; she simply weighs what would be too dear to lose. By ending on the jewel-weeds, Teasdale leaves the reader with a close, luminous image of rain and light, suggesting that such fleeting natural textures matter more to the speaker than the large movements of history.
Lost Things — Summary
Oh, I could let the world go by, Its loud new wonders and its wars, But how will I give up the sky When winter dusk is set with stars?
And I could let the cities go, Their changing customs and their creeds,-- But oh, the summer rains that blow In silver on the jewel-weeds!