Patterns by Amy Lowell: poem analysis & meaning

Patterns the full poem, lines numbered

I walk down the garden paths,

And all the daffodils

Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.

I walk down the patterned garden-paths

5In my stiff, brocaded gown.

With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,

I too am a rare

Pattern. As I wander down

The garden paths.

10My dress is richly figured,

And the train

Makes a pink and silver stain

On the gravel, and the thrift

Of the borders.

15Just a plate of current fashion,

Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.

Not a softness anywhere about me,

Only whalebone and brocade.

And I sink on a seat in the shade

20Of a lime tree. For my passion

Wars against the stiff brocade.

The daffodils and squills

Flutter in the breeze

As they please.

25And I weep;

For the lime-tree is in blossom

And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops

In the marble fountain

30Comes down the garden-paths.

The dripping never stops.

Underneath my stiffened gown

Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,

A basin in the midst of hedges grown

35So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,

But she guesses he is near,

And the sliding of the water

Seems the stroking of a dear

Hand upon her.

40What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!

I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.

All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,

And he would stumble after,

45Bewildered by my laughter.

I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.

I would choose

To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,

A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.

50Till he caught me in the shade,

And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,

Aching, melting, unafraid.

With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,

And the plopping of the waterdrops,

55All about us in the open afternoon—

I am very like to swoon

With the weight of this brocade,

For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom

60In my bosom,

Is a letter I have hid.

It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.

“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell

Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”

65As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,

The letters squirmed like snakes.

“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.

“No,” I told him.

“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.

70No, no answer.”

And I walked into the garden,

Up and down the patterned paths,

In my stiff, correct brocade.

The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,

75Each one.

I stood upright too,

Held rigid to the pattern

By the stiffness of my gown.

Up and down I walked,

80Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.

In a month, here, underneath this lime,

We would have broke the pattern;

He for me, and I for him,

85He as Colonel, I as Lady,

On this shady seat.

He had a whim

That sunlight carried blessing.

And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”

90Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk

Up and down

The patterned garden-paths

In my stiff, brocaded gown.

95The squills and daffodils

Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.

I shall go

Up and down,

In my gown.

100Gorgeously arrayed,

Boned and stayed.

And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace

By each button, hook, and lace.

For the man who should loose me is dead,

105Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,

In a pattern called a war.

Christ! What are patterns for?

The poem in 60 seconds

Amy Lowell holds back the key fact for more than half the poem: the speaker has known all along that the man she was to marry is dead. Everything before the letter, from the gown to the daydream by the fountain, reads differently once you know. Published in 1915, a year into the First World War, it ends by asking what all the rules and rituals are for when they lead to this.

A woman walks the paths of a formal garden among daffodils and squills. She wears a stiff brocade gown, powdered hair and a jeweled fan, and she says that she too is a pattern. Her boned dress holds her in, while her passion “Wars against the stiff brocade.” She sits under a blossoming lime tree and weeps as a small flower drops onto her bosom. The sound of the fountain carries her into a daydream: under her gown is a woman bathing while a lover hides nearby, and she wishes the gown lay crumpled on the ground. She pictures running through the maze of paths while her lover stumbles after her and catches her in the shade. Then she reveals a letter hidden under the fallen blossom. A rider brought it that morning: Lord Hartwell, the man she was to marry in a month, has been killed in action. She told her footman there was no answer and walked the garden, holding herself upright. Now she foresees walking these paths through summer and winter. The man who should have freed her died “In a pattern called a war,” and she cries out, asking what patterns are for.

Speaker & situation

SpeakerA wealthy woman of rank, speaking in the first person. She has a footman (line 67) and would have become a “Lady” when she married (line 85). The poem never gives her name.

Addressed toNo listener. The poem reads as her private thoughts as she walks, though she reports what she said to her footman (lines 68 to 70).

OccasionThe day a letter arrives “this morning” (line 62) saying that her fiancé, Lord Hartwell, has died in action. The poem does not reveal this until the fifth stanza.

SettingA formal garden with gravel paths, a marble fountain and a seat under a lime tree, meaning a linden rather than a citrus tree. Her powdered hair and a Duke fighting “in Flanders” (line 105) suggest an earlier century, though no date is given. When the poem appeared in 1915, Flanders, in Belgium, was one of the main battlefields of the First World War.

ToneControlled on the surface and close to breaking underneath. The short, stiff lines keep her composure, while the long lines of fantasy and the final cry of “Christ!” let the feeling through.

The speaker

Narrator

A woman of rank in a stiff brocade gown, due to be married within a month. She keeps her composure in front of others and lets her grief and desire out only in her thoughts.

Lord Hartwell

Her fiancé

A colonel (line 85) killed in action while “Fighting with the Duke in Flanders” (line 105). He believed “sunlight carried blessing” (line 88).

The footman

Servant

He asks whether there is any answer to the letter (line 67). Her replies to him show her holding to good manners even in shock.

The Duke

Commander

Never named. A rider from him brings the letter (line 62), and Lord Hartwell dies fighting under him in Flanders (line 105).

Form & sound

FormFree verse with rhyme; 107 lines in seven stanzas of very uneven length, spoken by an invented character. Lowell was a leading figure among the Imagist poets, and the sharp, concrete pictures of flowers, fabric and water come from that practice.

MeterThere is no regular meter. Lines run from two words (“Each one,” line 75) to long, loose lines like line 46. The length tracks her feeling: short and clipped when she holds herself in, long and flowing when she imagines escape.

Rhyme schemeIrregular. Rhymes come and go without a set pattern, often in quick pairs: “breeze” and “please” (lines 23 and 24), “arrayed” and “stayed” (lines 100 and 101), and the final “war” and “for” (lines 106 and 107), which snaps the poem shut.

SoundWater sounds run through the middle of the poem: “the plashing of waterdrops” (line 28), “The dripping never stops” (line 31) and “the plopping of the waterdrops” (line 54). Against them, hard, clipped phrases like “Boned and stayed” (line 101) make the dress sound as rigid as it feels.

StructureThe tenses carry the story. Stanzas 1 to 3 are in the present, stanza 4 is an imagined “would,” stanza 5 goes back to the morning’s letter, stanza 6 imagines the marriage that “would have” been, and stanza 7 looks ahead with “I shall” to a lifetime of the same walk.

Line by line what each part says and does

1

Lines 1–9

A pattern among patterns

The speaker walks down the garden paths among daffodils and bright blue squills. She wears a stiff brocade gown, powdered hair and a jeweled fan, and says she too is “a rare / Pattern.”

How it worksThe first stanza sets up the key word. The garden, the gown and the woman are all arranged by rules, and the line break after “rare” makes her pause before naming herself a pattern.
2

Lines 10–27

Whalebone and brocade

Her dress is richly figured, and its train leaves “a pink and silver stain” on the gravel. She calls herself a fashion plate with no softness anywhere, “Only whalebone and brocade.” She sits under a lime tree, her passion at war with the dress, and weeps as a small flower drops onto her bosom.

How it worksThe boned gown becomes an image of the rules that hold her body and feelings in. The flowers flutter “As they please,” a freedom she lacks, and the only cause she gives for her tears, a small flower dropping onto her bosom (lines 26 and 27), seems far too slight for them.
3

Lines 28–58

The daydream by the fountain

The sound of the fountain carries her into a daydream. Under her stiff gown, she says, is the softness of a woman bathing, who senses a lover hidden nearby. She wishes the gown lay crumpled on the ground, and imagines running through the maze of paths while her “heavy-booted lover” stumbles after her, bewildered by her laughter, until he catches her in the shade.

How it worksThese are the longest, loosest lines in the poem, as desire breaks free in imagination. The fantasy also shows what she has just lost, though the reader does not know it yet.
4

Lines 59–80

The letter

Under the fallen blossom, in her bosom, is a letter a rider from the Duke brought that morning. It says Lord Hartwell “Died in action Thursday se’nnight” (se’nnight is an old word for a week). The letters seemed to squirm like snakes. She told her footman there was no answer, asked that the messenger be given refreshment, and walked the paths, standing as upright as the flowers.

How it worksThe revelation changes everything before it: she has known of his death since the poem began. Her polite, correct orders show the pattern of good manners holding even now.
5

Lines 81–90

The marriage that will not happen

In a month he would have been her husband. Here, under this lime tree, they would have “broke the pattern,” he as Colonel and she as Lady. He had a whim that sunlight carried a blessing, and she had agreed. Now he is dead.

How it worksThe stanza moves into what would have been, the life that marriage might have opened for her. The short last line, “Now he is dead,” shuts it down.
6

Lines 91–107

Up and down, for life

She sees herself walking the same paths in her gown through summer and winter, as the spring flowers give way to roses, asters and snow. Her body will stay guarded “By each button, hook, and lace,” because the man who should have unfastened them died fighting with the Duke in Flanders. The poem ends with her cry: “Christ! What are patterns for?”

How it worksThe final stanza links the patterns of dress, garden and manners to the largest pattern of all, war. The closing question gets no answer.

The turn

Lines 59–64

Lines 1 to 58 show a woman fighting her stiff gown and dreaming of a lover, with only a fallen flower offered as the reason for her tears (lines 25 to 27). Lines 59 to 64 reveal the letter in her bosom: her fiancé has been killed. From here the poem moves from fantasy to loss, and from the present to a future of walking the same paths alone.

Literary devices with line numbers

Extended metaphor

The word “pattern” grows through the poem. It begins as the design of the garden paths (line 4), becomes the speaker herself (“a rare / Pattern,” lines 7 and 8), then the social rules she lives by (“Held rigid to the pattern,” line 77), and finally war itself (line 106).

Delayed revelation

The letter lies in her bosom from the start, under the flower that falls in line 27, but the reader learns of it only in lines 59 to 64. Her weeping in line 25 and the longing of stanzas 3 and 4 make full sense only afterward.

Imagery of hard and soft

Whalebone, brocade, buttons, hooks and lace (lines 18, 51 and 103) keep returning. Against them stand soft images, “the softness of a woman bathing” (line 33) and “Aching, melting, unafraid” (line 52). The clash of hard and soft is the clash between rules and desire.

Nature as contrast and mirror

In lines 22 to 24 the daffodils and squills “Flutter in the breeze / As they please,” a freedom she lacks. After the letter, in lines 74 to 76, the flowers “stood up proudly” and she “stood upright too,” so the garden now mirrors her rigid self-control.

Simile

In line 66, “The letters squirmed like snakes.” The words on the page seem alive and threatening, which captures her shock without her ever describing it directly.

Repetition

“Up and down” appears in lines 72, 79, 80, 92 and 98. The phrase, like the walk, goes nowhere, and by the last stanza it stands for the whole life she foresees.

Themes in Patterns

Convention and desireWar and lossWomen’s lives under rulesGrief held in

Convention and desire

The gown, the garden and the rules of her class hold the speaker in, while her passion “Wars against the stiff brocade” (line 21). The poem shows how much feeling those patterns hide.

War and loss

The final lines tie private grief to public violence. War is called “a pattern” (line 106), one more system of order, and it has destroyed Lord Hartwell’s life and the life she expected to have.

Women’s lives under rules

She is “Boned and stayed” (line 101), and even her grief must stay correct. Many readers see the poem as a feminist statement about how women’s bodies and choices were controlled.

Grief held in

She tells the footman “No, no answer” and walks on. The poem shows grief under strict control, breaking out only in the final cry.

Images and symbols

The brocade gown

Rich, stiff and boned, the gown stands for the rules and expectations placed on her. She would like to see it “lying in a heap upon the ground” (line 41).

The garden paths

Patterned, orderly and walked “Up and down,” they stand for a life laid out in advance. They lead nowhere new.

The fountain

The dripping water that “never stops” (line 31) sets off her fantasy of bathing and being touched. It stands for the softness and desire she keeps hidden.

The letter

Hidden in her bosom under the fallen blossom, it holds the fact that changes everything, just as her calm manner hides her grief.

Tensions

Self vs. society. Her body and feelings push against the gown, the garden and the manners of her class. She obeys the pattern outwardly while resisting it in thought.

Hope vs. loss. She had a wedding a month away and had promised to honor his wish about sunlight. War takes it all, leaving only the walk up and down the paths.

The ending

How Patterns ends, explained

The final stanza turns the poem toward the future. The speaker sees herself walking “Up and down” the same paths, in the same gown, through summer and winter, while the flowers change and the snow comes. Only the season will change. Her body “will be guarded from embrace / By each button, hook, and lace,” because the man who should “loose” her, meaning unfasten the gown and set her free, is dead. Then comes the link that makes the poem more than a private lament. Lord Hartwell died “Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, / In a pattern called a war.” War becomes one more pattern, like the dress, the garden and the manners that kept her calm in front of the footman. Each of them imposes order, and each of them, the poem suggests, costs someone a life or a self. The last line breaks her composure for the first time: “Christ! What are patterns for?” It is both an oath and a cry of despair, and the question is left open. Some readers hear a protest against war, published while Flanders was a battlefield. Others stress a feminist reading, about a woman trapped by the role her society gives her. Many see the two as one: the same rigid order that dresses her also sends men to die.

“I too am a rare / Pattern.”

Lines 7–8. She names herself as one more ordered thing in the garden. The line break makes her pause on “rare” before the word that gives the poem its title.

“For my passion / Wars against the stiff brocade.”

Lines 20–21. The poem’s central conflict in one sentence: feeling fights against the gown and everything it stands for.

“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell / Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”

Lines 63–64. The delayed revelation, in the flat, formal language of an official notice. Nothing before it prepares the reader.

“For the man who should loose me is dead, / Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, / In a pattern called a war. / Christ! What are patterns for?”

Lines 104–107. The ending links her private loss to war, the largest pattern of all, and her composure breaks at last.

Common misreadings

MythThe speaker learns of her fiancé’s death during the poem.

ActuallyThe letter was brought “this morning” (line 62), before the walk that opens the poem. She has known all along. The reader is the one who learns it late, in lines 59 to 64.

MythThe poem is set during the First World War.

ActuallyPowdered hair, a brocade gown, a footman and a Duke fighting in Flanders suggest an earlier century, and no date is given. The poem appeared in 1915, during the First World War, so its first readers could hardly miss the connection.

MythThe chase through the maze really happened.

ActuallyStanza 4 is in the conditional: “I would be,” “he would stumble,” “I would choose” (lines 43 to 47). It is a daydream of what she longed for, not a scene she remembers.

AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style

In Amy Lowell’s “Patterns,” a woman walks a formal garden in a stiff gown on the day she has learned that her fiancé was killed in war. Read the poem carefully, then write an essay that analyzes how Lowell uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on the rules that shape a life.

What a strong response notices

The growing meanings of “pattern,” from the garden paths and the speaker herself (lines 4 and 7–8) to social rules (line 77) and war (line 106).
Hard images of whalebone, brocade and buttons (lines 18 and 101–103) set against soft images of water and the body (lines 28–39).
The delayed revelation of the letter in lines 59–64, which recasts her tears in line 25.
The movement through tenses: present, imagined (lines 43–58), past (lines 59–80), what would have been (lines 81–90) and future (lines 91–107).
The shift from her controlled, polite words to the footman (lines 68–70) to the outcry of line 107.

Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.

Test yourself

1. Who is Lord Hartwell?

2. When did the letter arrive?

3. What does she tell the footman?

4. How did Lord Hartwell die?

5. What does line 106 call war?

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Answer

Explain it like I’m 12

A rich woman walks through a fancy garden in a stiff, tight dress. She feels trapped by the dress and by all the rules she has to follow. She daydreams about taking the dress off and running through the garden with the man she loves. Then we find out that a letter came that morning saying he was killed in a war. They were going to be married in a month. Now she sees herself walking the same paths alone for years, and she asks what all these rules are even for.

Compare & connect

The Story of an Hour

Kate Chopin

Another woman hears of a man’s death and reveals what marriage and convention mean to her. Chopin’s Louise Mallard feels a rush of freedom, where Lowell’s speaker sees freedom lost.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen

Written during the same war, Owen’s poem attacks the idea that dying for one’s country is sweet and fitting. Lowell attacks war from the side of those left at home.

The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A woman held in by rules others set for her stares at a pattern, the wallpaper’s, until it becomes a prison. Both works turn a pattern into an image of a woman’s confinement.

Discussion and essay prompts:

💬 Discussion questions

What is the poem Patterns by Amy Lowell about
What does the pattern symbolize in Patterns
What happens to Lord Hartwell in Patterns
How does Patterns explore the theme of convention and desire?
How does Patterns explore the theme of war and loss?
What is the central conflict in Patterns, and how does it shape the ending?

✎ Essay prompts

Analyze how Amy Lowell develops the theme of convention and desire in Patterns. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
Examine the significance of the brocade gown in Patterns. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
How does Amy Lowell use extended metaphor to shape the reader’s experience of Patterns?
Some readers assume that the speaker learns of her fiancé’s death during the poem. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.

Key questions students ask

What is the poem Patterns by Amy Lowell about
What does the pattern symbolize in Patterns
What happens to Lord Hartwell in Patterns
What does Christ what are patterns for mean
What is the theme of Patterns by Amy Lowell
Is Patterns by Amy Lowell about World War I

Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from Men, Women and Ghosts (Macmillan, 1916), where it opens the book, checked line by line against the page images of that printing. First published in The Little Review in 1915, it is in the public domain.