In “White Fog,” Sara Teasdale turns an ordinary landscape into something close to a dream. The hills are “drowned” in moving mist, and the phlox by the door are wrapped in “dripping wreaths of amethyst.” Even the ground ten feet away seems to melt into cloud. Everything solid loses its edges, and the air is so still that not even a bird wants to break the silence.
The speaker feels alone in a strange, suspended world—no sky, no ground, no sea, just fog. There is a hush that holds both sadness and strange beauty at once. Yet the speaker finds comfort in her own presence: when everything outside is shifting and unreadable, her self feels like the one steady thing.