The Lily
The Lily - meaning Summary
Faith in Natural Rhythms
The poem imagines a lily closing at night and waiting calmly for morning. The speaker wonders whether it has a private language or says nothing, then treats its patient trust in the returning sun as a model of prayer. Oliver suggests that faith need not be spoken: it can be the quiet, embodied confidence of a living thing following the rhythms of the natural world.
Read Complete AnalysesNight after night darkness enters the face of the lily which, lightly, closes its five walls around itself, and its purse of honey, and its fragrance, and is content to stand there in the garden, not quite sleeping, and, maybe, saying in lily language some small words we can’t hear even when there is no wind anywhere, its lips are so secret, its tongue is so hidden – or, maybe, it says nothing at all but just stands there with the patience of vegetables and saints until the whole earth has turned around and the silver moon becomes the golden sun – as the lily absolutely knew it would, which is itself, isn’t it, the perfect prayer?
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