Poem: The Garden by Moonlight By Amy Lowell

The Garden by Moonlight By Amy Lowell

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,
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.
Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring,
Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.
Then you come,
And you are quiet like the garden,
And white like the alyssum flowers,
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?
They knew my mother,
But who belonging to me will they know
When I am gone.

Beautiful poem by Amy Lowell. It's evocative, vivid, redolent, and full of picturesque language (a Monet painting). 

But the poem ends on a poignant reflection on the sense of sadness, loneliness, purposelessness, and perhaps even grief in being childless.

I think this poem was written for Amy's same-sex partner and muse Ada.

I think its the natural impulse to want to leave our prized possessions for the next generation - like our photos of grandparents, family home etc. So, there's a tragedy in having no family alive and the sense of abandonment and permanent loss that must arise. 

It's interesting for me because I don't think I want to have children; and yet I think I would feel that my life wouldn't have a meaningful purpose, in a deeper sense.