Primrose
William Carlos Williams 1883 (Rutherford) – 1963 (Rutherford)
Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!
It is not a color.
It is summer!
It is the wind on a willow,
the lap of waves, the shadow
under a bush, a bird, a bluebird,
three herons, a dead hawk
rotting on a pole--
Clear yellow!
It is a piece of blue paper
in the grass or a threecluster of
green walnuts swaying, children
playing croquet or one boy
fishing, a man
swinging his pink fists
as he walks--
It is ladysthumb, forget-me-nots
in the ditch, moss under
the flange of the carrail, the
wavy lines in split rock, a
great oaktree--
It is a disinclination to be
five red petals or a rose, it is
a cluster of birdsbreast flowers
on a red stem six feet high,
four open yellow petals
above sepals curled
backward into reverse spikes--
Tufts of purple grass spot the
green meadow and clouds the sky.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 30, 2023
- 45 sec read
- 172 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABBAACDEABFGHIJKLBMMBNOPQRSTMQ |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 793 |
Words | 150 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 30 |
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"Primrose" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/39687/primrose>.
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