What is poetry? Is it a mosaic

Of coloured stones which curiously are wrought

Into a pattern? Rather glass that’s taught

By patient labor any hue to take

And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make

Beauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught,

Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught

With storied meaning for religion’s sake.

***

More poems by Amy Lowell