Arts & Sciences
A New Year's Card
From Ballads for Sale (1927)
Everyone has his fancies, I suppose,
And to-night I should like to walk round a towered city
Blowing a blue silver trumpet.
Then, when all the people had run out
To see me circling the walls
Playing on a blue trumpet,
I would stop and sing them a song all about your loveliness.
I would make it of the flicker of the air and the sweep of the sun,
And when I had finished, they would see you sitting on a cloud
And know how far you surpassed others in everything.
But there is no towered city,
And I have no blue trumpet,
And those who meet you seem to feel about you much as I do without the aid of these accessories,
Which proves how very useless a thing a poet is, after all.
Cite this poem
MLA
Lowell, Amy. “A New Year's Card.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/lowell_a/428/.
Chicago
Lowell, Amy. “A New Year's Card.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/lowell_a/428/.
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