A Lady Red Amid the Hill
poem 74
A Lady Red Amid the Hill - meaning Summary
Spring's Secret Domestic Scene
The poem personifies spring flora as discreet women keeping seasonal secrets: a "lady red" on the hill and a "lady white" sleeping like a lily in the field. Domestic images—housewives, tidy breezes with brooms, neighbors—frame nature’s quiet preparations as a neighborhood ritual. The community doesn’t notice the imminent change; woods and orchards smile in expectation. The closing lines register a gentle astonishment at nature’s calmness, comparing the sudden resurgence of life to a casual, almost ordinary Resurrection
, implying renewal can be both miraculous and everyday.
A Lady red amid the Hill Her annual secret keeps! A Lady white, within the Field In placid Lily sleeps! The tidy Breezes, with their Brooms Sweep vale and hill and tree! Prithee, My pretty Housewives! Who may expected be? The Neighbors do not yet suspect! The Woods exchange a smile! Orchard, and Buttercup, and Bird In such a little while! And yet, how still the Landscape stands! How nonchalant the Hedge! As if the Resurrection Were nothing very strange!
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