The Water Lily
The Water Lily - meaning Summary
Loss and Imagined Reunion
The poem portrays a grieving young wife who dreams of a lily-strewn pool where a child with butterfly wings beckons her to step onto water-lily leaves. She follows in the dream but the leaves sink and she wakes to deep sorrow. The repeated refrain reveals the vision as the dead child’s spirit calling, so the poem centers on maternal longing, the lure of imagined reunion, and the pain of waking to loss.
Read Complete AnalysesA lonely young wife in her dreaming discerns a lily-decked pool with a border of ferns, and a beautiful child, with butterfly wings, trips down to the edge of the water and sings: ‘Come, mamma! Come! ‘Quick! Follow me — ‘Step out on the leaves of the water-lily!’ And the lonely young wife, her heart beating wild, cries: ‘Wait till I come, ‘Till I reach you, my child!’ But the beautiful child with butterfly wings steps out on the leaves of the lily and sings: ‘Come, mamma! Come! ‘Quick! Follow me! ‘And step on the leaves of the water-lily! And the wife in her dreaming steps out on the stream, but the lily leaves sink and she wakes from her dream. Ah, the waking is sad, for the tears that it brings, and she knows ’tis her dead baby’s spirit that sings: ‘Come, mamma! Come! ‘Quick! Follow me! ‘Step out on the leaves of the water-lily!’
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