Summary and Analysis
“Barter,” by the American poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), is a lyric poem consisting of three stanzas of six lines each. Most of the lines consist of either seven or eight syllables, with some variation in this pattern from stanza to stanza. For example, the syllable counts for the first stanza 1 are 7, 8, 7, 7, 8, 7. The numbers of syllables for the second stanza are 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7. Finally, the numbers of syllables found in the third stanza are 8, 8, 8, 9, 8, 8. From the mere appearance of the poem on the page, one might have expected the line lengths to be very regular, but as the aforementioned numbers suggest, there is far more variation in the poem, especially from one stanza to the next, than one might have anticipated. Teasdale is often praised for the subtle music of her poetry, and the syllable counts suggest that she did not hesitate to vary from strict, predictable patterns (at least in this poem) if she thought that doing so would improve the poem’s rhythms and sounds.
In its rhyme scheme, the poem displays more regularity, but here again the design is more intriguing than it might at first appear. Thus, the rhyme scheme of stanza 1 is as follows: a/b/c/b/d/d. This same basic (but fairly unusual) pattern is repeated in the next two stanzas, although line 7 is a verbatim repetition of line 1. We might thus expect line 13 to repeat lines 1 and 7, but instead Teasdale offers another departure from expectations. Although she was writing during a period of great formal experimentation in poetry, and although her poem might at first look fairly conservative and traditional in its design, there is more variation in this text than is at first apparent. Once again, then, Teasdale seems more subtle than one might have assumed.
One way in which the poem does display a strong degree of regularity is in its syntax (or sentence structure). This is especially the case since each stanza consists of a single sentence. Stretching one sentence across six lines (while having that sentence make clear sense) can be difficult, but one way Teasdale achieves clarity is by breaking her sentences up into smaller units—units whose existence is often signaled by the punctuation at the ends of lines. Of the eighteen lines of the poem, only three feature enjambment (that is, an absence of punctuation at the end of a line). By mostly avoiding enjambment, Teasdale fills her sentences with plenty of pauses and thus makes their structure easier to follow. Of course, the risk of so much punctuation at the ends of lines is that of creating a kind of “singsong” effect, and so some readers might accuse this poem of sounding merely simplistic rather than appealingly simple.
The speaker of the poem is anonymous; not even a particular gender is implied. The voice is a voice of confident, authoritative wisdom. The poem opens with a clear assertion (“Life has loveliness to sell”), an assertion made all the more emphatic when it is repeated, word for word, in line 7. This text, we immediately realize, is a poem intended to teach us something. In a sense, the poem begins with a lesson that the rest of the poem will then explain and develop.
The phrasing of the first two lines of stanza 1 is abstract and general, while the phrasing in the next four is vivid and highly specific. The first two lines make broad claims; the ensuing four offer particular examples to support those claims. Line 3...
(This entire section contains 1446 words.)
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is especially vivid, partly because of its use of colors and partly because of the splendid verbwhitened to describe how blue waves abruptly become white breakers. The first two lines of the opening stanza might have been written by almost anyone, but line 3 reveals the sharp perceptions of a genuine poet. Line 4, while less startlingly vivid than line 3, nevertheless is also inventive, particularly in the way it uses a metaphor to describe fire as if fire were a singing dancer. All four of the final lines of stanza 1 are “romantic” in the sense that they tend to emphasize the “loveliness” and beauty of existence (particularly, nature) rather than stress any disturbing elements. Yet each of the three main images the speaker presents in these lines is vivid and memorable and thus does not seem simply predictable or formulaic.
Stanza 1 is also effectively musical, especially in its use of alliteration (“Life has loveliness to sell”; “Soaring fire that sways and sings”). This stanza, with its beautiful language, is thus yet another example of the very kind of beauty it celebrates. By the end of the stanza, most readers will be willing to admit that the speaker has managed to give three memorable examples of the claims made in the first two lines.
Stanza 2 strongly resembles stanza 1, not only because of the exact repetition of line 1 in line 7 but also because both stanzas are similarly constructed and serve much the same purpose. In both stanzas, the speaker begins with a strong general assertion and then proceeds to justify that generalization by offering specific examples to confirm it. Once again, the imagery is essentially romantic (in more than one sense of that word, particularly in line 10), and although some of the imagery might seem predictable (especially in line 10), some of it seems especially striking. Line 8 (“Music like a curve of gold”) seems particularly vivid and memorable, partly because of the use of synesthesia (a technique in which one sense is described in terms appropriate to another). Thus, in line 8, a sound is described as if it were a visual image, and the image is itself particularly intriguing. What, after all, is a “curve” of gold? If the speaker had used piece or ounce, the line would not have been nearly as effective. The word curve, however, is both surprising and evocative. Similarly intriguing is line 12 (“Holy thoughts that star the night”). The use of star as a verb is unexpected and therefore striking, while the idea that thoughts illuminate the night like stars (rather than the more predictable idea that stars in the night sky provoke thoughts) catches the reader by surprise.
Notice, also, how the second stanza seems significantly more direct and personal than the first. Lines 10 and 11 address the reader directly, so that the lessons the poem seeks to teach now seem more personally relevant than they had seemed in stanza 1. Stanza 1, for all its specificity of imagery, was nevertheless more impersonal than stanza 2 becomes, and stanza 3 becomes even more directly personal than stanza 2. In other words, as the poem develops, it becomes an increasingly direct address to the reader. What begins as an assertion or description becomes, by the third stanza, a kind of command or injunction.
This shift is apparent immediately, in the very first line of stanza 3: “Spend all you have for loveliness.” Now the speaker is no longer making assertions about loveliness or giving specific examples of it; now she is directly telling the reader how to respond to loveliness. Paradoxically, she uses commercial metaphors (“Spend,” line 13; “Buy it and never count the lost,” line 14) to discuss a topic that is usually thought of (and that has so far been presented in the poem) as distant from the world of commerce. The speaker continues, then, to surprise in a poem whose phrasing could easily have been merely predictable and stale.
Further evidence of the poet’s inventiveness occurs in line 3 of the third stanza, where the speaker refers to “one white singing hour of peace.” Here the phrasing echoes the phrasing of lines 3 and 4 of stanza 1, thus giving the poem a kind of symmetry it might otherwise lack. The adjective white seems especially inventive and striking, since one does not normally think of time in terms of colors unless one is speaking of the black hours of darkness and sleep. Here the word white perhaps associates “peace” with the life, alertness, and activity of daytime.
While the phrasing of lines 16 and 17 is more predictable and conventional than the phrasing of some earlier lines, the overall tone of the third stanza is forceful and energetic, mainly because of the prevalence of so many imperative verbs (spend, buy, count, give). These verbs (all associated in one way or another with the language of finance) help give the stanza an unusual degree of unity, while the final line of the poem (“Give all you have been, or could be”) seems effective because its implications are so comprehensive. They deal not only with all of the past but with all of the future. Like the reference to “a breath of ecstasy” in the preceding line (17), line 18 brings an essentially romantic poem to a strongly romantic conclusion.
