Sara Teasdale’s “To-night” places a quiet moment of love under a luminous evening sky. The speaker sees a golden, flower-like moon hanging in the still blue air and reads it as a sign of natural belonging: the sky was made to hold the moon, just as the speaker feels made for the beloved. The moon becomes a stemless flower, lovely and seemingly suspended, and the sky around it glows. Then the poem turns from the cosmic to the personal. Eternity, the speaker says, belongs to the moon and sky; this particular night belongs to the two lovers. The mood is hushed, tender, and assured. There is no urgency or doubt, only a calm sense that, for one evening, human love fits into the world as beautifully and inevitably as the moon fits the sky.
To-night — Summary
The moon is a curving flower of gold, The sky is still and blue; The moon was made for the sky to hold, And I for you.
The moon is a flower without a stem, The sky is luminous; Eternity was made for them, To-night for us.