Pablo Neruda

Enigma with Flower

Enigma with Flower - meaning Summary

Victory of Late Blooming

The poem uses the image of a white lily pushing through soil to represent a late but triumphant emergence into being. The speaker admits they had not learned to "arrive" naturally, then watches the flower shed darkness, pierce earth, and unfold its whiteness as a small victory over night. The bloom’s steady motion and sudden spill of seed suggest renewal, revelation, and the quiet power of delayed realization.

Read Complete Analyses

Victory. It has come late, I had not learnt how to arrive, like the lily, at will, the white figure, that pierces the motionless eternity of earth, pushing at clear, faint, form, till the hour strikes: that clay, with a white ray, or a spur of milk. Shedding of clothing, the thick darkness of soil, on whose cliff the fair flower advances, till the flag of its whiteness defeats the contemptible deep of night, and, from the motion of light, spills itself in astonished seed.

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