Near where I live there is a lake
As blue as blue can be, winds make
It dance as they go blowing by.
I think it curtseys to the sky.
It’s just a lake of lovely flowers
And my Mamma says they are ours;
But they are not like those we grow
To be our very own, you know.
We have a splendid garden, there
Are lots of flowers everywhere;
Roses, and pinks, and four o’clocks
And hollyhocks, and evening stocks.
Mamma lets us pick them, but never
Must we pick any gentians — ever!
For if we carried them away
They’d die of homesickness that day.
***
More poems by Amy Lowell
Amy Lawrence Lowell (1874 – 1925) was an American poetess that belonged to the informal imagist, an early modernist movement, which promoted a return to classical values. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.