“I Am Not Yours” is Sara Teasdale’s 1915 love poem about a woman who longs to lose herself completely in the man who loves her, yet finds that she remains her own person. The 12-line lyric appeared in her book Rivers to the Sea and was reprinted in Love Songs (1917), which won the prize later counted as the first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Our reading is that the poem is less a declaration of love than a confession of a gap. The speaker is loved and loves back, but she cannot dissolve into another person, and every image of surrender she reaches for is also an image of being snuffed out.
At a Glance
- Poet
- Sara Teasdale (1884–1933)
- First published
- Rivers to the Sea (Macmillan, 1915)
- Collected in
- Love Songs (Macmillan, 1917)
- Form
- Lyric in three quatrains
- Length
- 12 lines
- Meter
- Iambic tetrameter (“i AM not YOURS, not LOST in YOU”)
- Era
- Modernist
- Best-known lines
- “Yet I am I, who long to be / Lost as a light is lost in light.”
ON THIS PAGE
Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · Related Poems
Summary
The speaker tells her lover that she is not his and not lost in him, though she wishes she were. She wants to disappear the way a candle’s flame disappears in daylight or a snowflake melts into the sea. He loves her, and she finds him beautiful, yet she is still herself.
In the last stanza, she begs him to plunge her deep in love, to overwhelm her senses until she is deaf and blind, like a small candle caught in a rushing wind.
The Poem
The text below follows the first edition of Rivers to the Sea (Macmillan, 1915), where the poem appears in three quatrains.
I am not yours, not lost in you, Not lost, altho’ I long to be Lost as a candle lit at noon, Lost as a snow-flake 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.
Background
Sara Teasdale was born in St. Louis in 1884 and became one of the most popular American poets of the early 20th century, known for short, musical love lyrics. Rivers to the Sea, published by Macmillan in 1915, was her third book of poems. It came out the year after her marriage, in December 1914, to Ernst Filsinger, a St. Louis businessman she chose over the poet Vachel Lindsay, who had also courted her. Readers often connect the poem’s divided feeling to that marriage, though Teasdale never said whom it was about.
She included the poem again in Love Songs (1917), a selection of her love poetry. In 1918, that book won a special prize from the Columbia University Poetry Society, which is now counted as the first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In the first edition of Rivers to the Sea, the title is printed inside quotation marks, as if it were a line spoken aloud.
Analysis and Themes
The poem turns on one paradox. The speaker wants to be lost in love, and the very fact that she can describe that wish shows she has not been lost. Her images of surrender all share a hidden cost.
A Wish Stated as a Denial
The poem opens with a refusal, “I am not yours,” and then immediately explains that the refusal is not a choice: “Not lost, altho’ I long to be.” The repetition of “lost” across the first stanza shows how badly she wants it. The problem is not that she does not love him. It is that love has not erased her.
Images of Vanishing
Each image of union is also an image of disappearance. A candle lit at noon gives no visible light, a snowflake in the sea is gone at once, and a light lost in light cannot be told apart from what surrounds it. Teasdale chooses things that do not survive being merged. The longing is sincere, but the pictures suggest that total union would mean the end of the self.
“Yet I Am I”
The turn comes in the middle stanza. Her lover is “a spirit beautiful and bright,” and still “I am I.” Those three short words hold the poem’s center: an identity that will not dissolve, however much she wants it to. It can be read as a regret, a confession, or a quiet declaration of independence, and the poem allows all three.
A Plea That Ends in Danger
The final stanza becomes an urgent request: “Oh plunge me deep in love.” She asks to be made deaf and blind, and her last image is a taper, a thin candle, in a rushing wind. A wind like that does not merge with a flame. It puts it out. The poem ends on a picture of ecstasy that is also a picture of extinction.
Form and Technique
The poem has 12 lines in three quatrains of iambic tetrameter, as in “i AM not YOURS, not LOST in YOU.” Each stanza rhymes ABCB, so only the second and fourth lines chime: “be” and “sea,” “bright” and “light,” “blind” and “wind.” The last is a traditional poetic rhyme that treats “wind” as rhyming with “kind.”
Teasdale relies on repetition rather than complicated imagery. The word “lost” appears six times, and the phrase “long to be” appears twice, once in the first stanza and again in the second. The plain vocabulary and steady rhythm make the poem easy to memorize, and the dash in the third stanza, after “deep in love,” marks the moment the speaker’s control gives way.
Notable Lines
These lines hold the poem’s paradox.
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lines 3 to 4
Lost as a snow-flake in the sea.
Two images of something swallowed by a larger version of itself: flame in sunlight, water in water.
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lines 7 to 8
Lost as a light is lost in light.
The heart of the poem. The self that refuses to vanish is the same self that longs to.
Swept by the tempest of your love,
Lines 11 to 12
A taper in a rushing wind.
The closing image of surrender, which is also the image of a flame about to go out.
Themes
Four ideas run through the poem.
Love as surrender. The speaker wants love to overwhelm her completely, to the point of losing her senses and her separateness.
Identity. “I am I” insists on a self that persists even inside a loving relationship, whether she welcomes that or not.
Desire and its danger. Every image of union is also an image of being extinguished, so the poem’s longing carries a real risk.
Distance within intimacy. She is loved and loves in return, yet a gap remains between two people that no feeling fully closes.
Frequently Asked Questions
These are the questions readers most often ask about “I Am Not Yours”.
What is “I Am Not Yours” about?
It is about a woman who is loved and wants to be completely lost in that love, but finds she still remains herself. She compares the surrender she longs for to a candle lit at noon or a snowflake falling into the sea, and ends by asking her lover to overwhelm her.
What does “Lost as a light is lost in light” mean?
It means disappearing completely into something of the same nature, the way a small light vanishes inside a larger one. The speaker wants to merge with her lover so fully that there is no longer any line between them.
When was “I Am Not Yours” published?
It was published in 1915 in Sara Teasdale’s third book of poems, Rivers to the Sea. She reprinted it in Love Songs (1917), the collection that won the prize later counted as the first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
What is the rhyme scheme of “I Am Not Yours”?
Each of the three quatrains rhymes ABCB: only the second and fourth lines rhyme, as in “be” and “sea” or “bright” and “light.” The last pair, “blind” and “wind,” is a traditional poetic rhyme that relies on the older pronunciation of “wind.”
What is a taper in “I Am Not Yours”?
A taper is a thin candle. In the last line, the speaker imagines herself as a small candle flame in a rushing wind, a picture of being overwhelmed by love and perhaps put out by it.
Glossary
A few words are old-fashioned or poetic.
- altho’ (line 2): Although, shortened to keep the rhythm.
- still (line 5): Always, or even now, not “motionless.”
- tempest (line 11): A violent storm.
- taper (line 12): A thin candle, or a slender wick coated in wax.
Related Poems
If this poem speaks to you, these make good companions.
- The Kiss by Sara Teasdale: Another short Teasdale lyric about the distance between what love promises and what it gives.
- There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale: Her best-known poem, in the same simple, musical style.
- Wild Nights – Wild Nights! by Emily Dickinson: A burst of longing to be lost at sea in love.
- What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why by Edna St. Vincent Millay: A sonnet by Teasdale’s younger contemporary about love, memory, and loss.
- How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A love poem of total devotion, with none of Teasdale’s doubt.