Behind a Wall poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry

I own a solace shut within my heart,

A garden full of many a quaint delight

And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshine; bright,

Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart

Shining things

With powdered wings.

Here terrace sinks to terrace, arbors close

The ends of dreaming paths; a wanton wind

Jostles the half-ripe pears, and then, unkind,

Tumbles a-slumber in a pillar rose,

With content

Grown indolent.

By night my garden is o’erhung with gems

Fixed in an onyx setting. Fireflies

Flicker their lanterns in my dazzled eyes.

In serried rows I guess the straight, stiff stems

Of hollyhocks

Against the rocks.

So far and still it is that, listening,

I hear the flowers talking in the dawn;

And where a sunken basin cuts the lawn,

Cinctured with iris, pale and glistening,

The sudden swish

Of a waking fish.

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