Amy Lowell was a poet, performer, and translator who was devoted to modern poetry during her lifetime. Her career lasted for only around 12 years, but she wrote more than 650 poems. Today, she’s remembered for her attempts to “awaken” American readers to the beauties of contemporary poetry.
‘A Lady’ contrasts youth’s fleeting sparkle with the profound beauty of age, likening an elderly woman’s essence to timeless art.
You are beautiful and faded,
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Amy Lowell’s ‘Chinoiseries’ is an ekphrastic poem depicting the engravings on chinoiserie pottery. Lowell’s speaker gets lost in the art as if it is the eyes of her loved one.
When I looked into your eyes,
I saw a garden
With peonies, and tinkling pagodas,
And round-arched bridges
Amy Lowell’s ‘A Fairy Tale’ contrasts childhood’s magical tales with adulthood’s harsh realities, exploring the longing for unmet desires.
On winter nights beside the nursery fire
We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals
Builded its pictures. There before our eyes
We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone
‘Apples of Hesperides’ depicts the unreachable allure of Hesperides’ golden apples, embodying unattainable desires.
Glinting golden through the trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Through the moon-pierced warp of night
Shoot pale shafts of yellow light,
‘Fool’s Money Bags’ is an interesting poem that touches on love and devotion towards the wrong people and things. Read Amy Lowell’s poem, along with a deep dive analysis.
Outside the long window,
With his head on the stone sill,
The dog is lying,
Gazing at his Beloved.
‘Patterns’ by Amy Lowell is an unforgettable poem about a woman’s loss during World War I. It describes the “patterns” of a speaker’s life and how, with the knowledge that her fiancé has died in the War, she’s doing to be confined to a far more sorrowful one.
I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden paths
‘Petals’ reflects on life’s transience, comparing emotions to petals in a stream—fleeting yet leaving a lasting fragrance.
Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
‘The Bombardment’ is a narrative poem written in the style of the Imagist movement. It is devoid of extraneous details and gets right to the heart of the drama.
Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the city. It stops a moment
on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping and trickling
over his stone cloak.
‘The Garden by Moonlight’ captures a moonlit garden’s tranquility, reflecting on nature’s beauty and the fleeting nature of life and legacy.
A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,
Lowell’s ‘To a Friend’ examines the selfishness in desiring eternal, unchanging friendships, revealing human complexities.
I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
‘To an Early Daffodil’ by Amy Lowell contains a depiction of the beauty and strength of a single blooming daffodil.
Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
Thou herald of rich Summer’s myriad flowers!
The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring
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