Life & Wisdom Quote by Sara Teasdale

A quiet line with a clenched fist inside it, Teasdale’s plea is less about conquest than custody. “Of my own spirit” frames the battlefield as internal, not romantic or public, and “let me be” gives the request a devotional, almost prayerlike pressure. She isn’t declaring power; she’s asking permission from whatever forces keep tipping her off balance: love, expectation, illness, melancholy, the era’s strict choreography for women’s lives. The syntax matters. “Let me” implies a gatekeeper. “Be” implies existence under review.

The brilliance is the self-knowledge embedded in “sole though feeble mastery.” Teasdale rejects the heroic posture. She wants “sole” control even if it’s “feeble,” as if monopoly matters more than strength. That’s a modern psychological truth: autonomy can feel lifesaving even when it doesn’t look impressive from the outside. The phrase also carries a subtle rebuke to the culture of grand gestures; she’s not chasing transformation, just a reliable grip on herself.

Context sharpens the stakes. Writing in the early 20th century, Teasdale became famous for lyrical intimacy while privately wrestling with depression and a life that didn’t match the script of contented domesticity. The line reads like a poet bargaining for the minimum viable freedom: not triumph, not happiness, just the right to steer her own interior weather. It’s control as survival, spoken in a voice that refuses to pretend it’s easy.