One of my dilemmas in putting Teasdale poetry to music is the fact that she mostly wrote 
very short poems. It was her lyricism that attracted me. It was the shortness of the poems 
that challenged me. Because of that I sometimes combine two different songs into a single 
work. Thematically this does not work perfectly, but the contrast of the two poems adds an 
element that forces the listener to think. In this case maybe the whole is greater than 
the sum of its parts.

I AM NOT YOURS / COME
Words by Sara Teasdale, music by James E. Nelson

I AM NOT YOURS:  

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh, plunge me deep in love--put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind. 

COME

Come, when the pale moon like a petal
Floats in the pearly dusk of Spring.
Come with arms outstretched to take me,
Come with lips pursed up to cling.

Come, for life is a frail moth flying
Caught in the web of the years that pass,
And soon we two, so warm and eager,
Will be as the gray stones in the grass.