With fruit and flowers the board is deckt,
The wine and laughter flow;
I’ll not complain–could one expect
So dull a world to know?
You look across the fruit and flowers,
My glance your glances find.–
It is our secret, only ours,
Since all the world is blind.
Amy Levy (1861 – 1889) was a Victorian era poetess and prose author who wrote in English in the second half of the 19th century, a Jewess, she also wrote on feminist and Jewish themes. She suffered from an acute depression, was likely a lesbian, and is now remembered as a acquaintance of Oscar Wilde. The poetess exterminated herself, that is committed suicide, by inhaling carbon monoxide at her beloved parents’ home. She was the first Jewess to be cremated in England and her ashes are burried in Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery in London.