Sara Teasdale’s speaker has just parted from someone, yet she refuses to disappear. She imagines that she has planted her love so widely that he will meet it everywhere: it will wake him in the night and wrap around him in the air. Her shadow, sent after him and “winged with desire,” becomes a cloud by day and a shaft of fire by night. There is longing here, but also a quiet, almost haunting intensity. She does not simply miss him—she wants to remain present to him, woven into the very atmosphere he moves through. The mood is dreamlike and bittersweet, tender but slightly eerie, as love turns into a presence that follows, surrounds, and unsettles.
After Parting — Summary
Oh I have sown my love so wide That he will find it everywhere; It will awake him in the night, It will enfold him in the air.
I set my shadow in his sight And I have winged it with desire, That it may be a cloud by day And in the night a shaft of fire.