The Kiss

By Sara Teasdale

“The Kiss” is Sara Teasdale’s eight-line poem about a woman who is finally kissed by the man she loves and feels sad, because the kiss is not as wonderful as her dreams of it. It appeared in 1911 in her second book, Helen of Troy and Other Poems, and was later reprinted in Love Songs (1917).

Our reading is that the poem is less about a disappointing kiss than about a person for whom dreaming will always be more vivid than having. Every ordinary reason for sadness is ruled out, and what remains is the quiet discovery that fulfillment is smaller than longing.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Related Poems

Summary

A woman has been kissed by the man she hoped would love her. She has what she wanted, yet she feels like a wounded bird that cannot fly south for the winter.

In the second stanza, she explains. It is not that he does not love her, because she knows he does. It is that the kiss itself could not match everything she had dreamed it would be.

The Poem

The text below follows the first edition of Helen of Troy and Other Poems (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911).

I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.

For tho’ I know he loves me,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.

Background

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) was an American lyric poet from St. Louis, known for short, musical poems about love, longing, beauty, and death. “The Kiss” appeared in her second book, Helen of Troy and Other Poems, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1911, where the poem was printed with the spelling “tho’” in line 5. She chose it again for Love Songs (1917), which won a special 1918 prize from the Columbia University Poetry Society, now counted as the first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

It is tempting to read the poem against Teasdale’s life, since she was courted by several men in these years before marrying in 1914. The poem does not need that story. It belongs to a recognizable Teasdale mood, drawn again and again to the gap between what the heart imagines and what the world delivers.

Analysis and Themes

The easy reading of “The Kiss” is that a real kiss let the speaker down after she had built it up in fantasy. That is true, but the poem is more precise and more unsettling than that.

When the Dream Outshines the Kiss

The poem carefully rules out the ordinary reasons for sadness. He does love her, “tho’ I know he loves me,” so this is not unrequited love. The kiss happened, and the wish was granted. The first stanza even marks that with “And” rather than “but”: “I hoped that he would love me, / And he has kissed my mouth.” By removing every outside cause, Teasdale isolates the real one, saved for the last two lines. The disappointment is not in him. It is in the discovery that having is thinner than wanting.

The Stricken Bird

The poem’s one image carries its weight. She is “like a stricken bird / That cannot reach the south.” A migrating bird flying south is following its deepest instinct toward warmth and survival, and a wounded one, grounded, will not make it. So the simile says more than “I feel sad.” It says that the longing that carried her toward love has been injured by getting what it longed for. The cost of fulfillment may be the loss of the dream itself.

A Quiet Refusal of the Happy Ending

In 1911, a kiss from the beloved was supposed to be the happy ending of a woman’s story. Teasdale takes that exact moment and reports, calmly and without apology, that it disappointed her. The speaker never blames the man and never asks for comfort. She simply records a private truth that the usual romantic script has no room for, and that honesty about desire is part of why the small poem still feels alive.

Form and Technique

The poem has eight lines in two quatrains rhyming ABCB, in short lines of three and four beats, the plain measure of a ballad or song. There is exactly one figure of speech, the stricken bird, and not a single decorative word. That bareness suits the speaker’s flattened mood.

The structure withholds, then explains. The first stanza gives the puzzle, kissed yet stricken, and the second gives the answer, like the turn in a sonnet compressed into a song. The phrase “not so wonderful” is deliberately mild, and “dreams” lands near the very end, the largest thing in the poem, left standing while the kiss shrinks beside it.

Notable Lines

Three moments carry the poem from granted wish to wound to the quiet truth behind it.

I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,

Lines 1 to 2

The wish is granted, not denied. Nothing here has gone wrong by ordinary measures.

But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.

Lines 3 to 4

The image the poem stakes everything on: a wound to the very instinct for longing.

His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.

Lines 7 to 8

The quiet confession at the poem’s heart, where the imagined outweighs the real.

Themes

Three ideas run through the poem.

Dream and reality. What we imagine can be richer than what we receive, even when we receive exactly what we wanted.

Love and disappointment. Being loved does not guarantee happiness, and the poem refuses to pretend otherwise.

Honesty about desire. The speaker trusts her own feelings over the romantic story she is expected to live.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “The Kiss” by Sara Teasdale.

What is “The Kiss” by Sara Teasdale about?

It is about a woman who is finally kissed by the man she hoped would love her and finds that she is sad anyway. The kiss was real and his love is real, but neither is as wonderful as the dreams she had imagined.

What does the stricken bird mean in “The Kiss”?

The stricken bird is a wounded migrating bird that cannot fly south for the winter. It suggests that the kiss has injured the speaker’s ability to long and dream, the very feeling that had carried her toward love.

When was “The Kiss” published?

It was published in 1911 in Sara Teasdale’s second book of poems, Helen of Troy and Other Poems. She later included it in Love Songs (1917), the collection that won the prize now counted as the first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

What is the rhyme scheme of “The Kiss”?

Each of its two quatrains rhymes ABCB, so only the second and fourth lines rhyme: “mouth” and “south,” “sad” and “had.” The pattern, with its short lines, is the plain measure of a song or ballad.

Related Poems

If this poem stays with you, these turn on the same discovery that desire and fulfillment are rarely the same size.

• The Look by Sara Teasdale: Two men’s kisses are forgotten, and only the one who merely looked still haunts the speaker.
• I Am Not Yours by Sara Teasdale: Another Teasdale lyric about a gap in love that no feeling fully closes.
• Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats: A lover frozen just before the kiss, whose desire stays perfect because it is never fulfilled.
• Wild Nights – Wild Nights! by Emily Dickinson: Longing at full strength, before any disappointment can reach it.