Amy Lowell

Attitude Under an Elm Tree

virginals, upper chamber

The virginals were keyboard instruments played by women of leisure in Renaissance households. The confined space signals a woman locked into courtly domesticity—literally and socially.

Seeing that you pass your life playing upon the virginals
In an upper chamber with only a slit of a window in it,

virginals, upper chamber

The virginals were keyboard instruments played by women of leisure in Renaissance households. The confined space signals a woman locked into courtly domesticity—literally and socially.

I wonder why I,

maple-red charger

The repeated color emphasizes mobility and wildness—the speaker's freedom contrasts sharply with the woman's imprisonment. The charger is a war horse, not a courtly mount.

Roaming the hills on a charger red as maple-leaves,
Should find the thought of you attractive.
You were veiled at the jousting, you remember,

veiled at the jousting

Medieval women watched tournaments from screened galleries. The veil creates productive mystery—the speaker prefers imagination to 'rigidness of fact.' This is Lowell acknowledging the gap between desire and knowledge.

Which enables me to imagine you without let or hindrance from the rigidness of fact;
A condition not unproductive of charm if viewed philosophically.

walled garden

The garden is property, inheritance, boundary. The speaker refuses to dismount—won't surrender mobility or status by entering on foot. The refusal is as important as the attraction.

Besides, your window gives upon a walled garden,
Which I can by no means enter without dismounting from my maple-red charger,

walled garden

The garden is property, inheritance, boundary. The speaker refuses to dismount—won't surrender mobility or status by entering on foot. The refusal is as important as the attraction.

And this I will not do,
Particularly as the garden belongs indubitably to your ancestors.

spray of myrtle

Myrtle symbolizes love in classical tradition. But notice: it 'over-topped the wall'—the speaker takes it without permission, then apologizes preemptively. Theft disguised as courtesy.

But I thank you for the spray of myrtle I have wound about my sleeve.
As it over-topped the wall,

spray of myrtle

Myrtle symbolizes love in classical tradition. But notice: it 'over-topped the wall'—the speaker takes it without permission, then apologizes preemptively. Theft disguised as courtesy.

without malice

The final line undercuts itself. 'Malice' is too strong a word for what happened—suggesting the speaker knows the act was small, possessive, and indefensible. The poem ends with evasion.

My plucking it was without malice.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Refusal: What Lowell Does with Medieval Courtship

This poem inverts courtly love tradition by having the mobile, powerful speaker—the one who *should* be making demands—explicitly refuse to enter the woman's space. [CONTEXT: Lowell wrote this in 1914, during a period when she was rethinking female desire and power. Medieval courtship poetry typically featured a male speaker pursuing an unattainable woman; here, the genders are reversed and the power dynamics are deliberately stalled.]

The repetition of the opening stanza signals something important: this isn't a dramatic revelation but a philosophical puzzle the speaker keeps circling. Why *should* he find her attractive? The answer Lowell gives is radical—because she is veiled, because she is inaccessible, because imagination works better than fact. The speaker is honest about his own desire being built on distance and unknowing.

The refusal to dismount is the poem's hinge. By staying mounted on his red horse, the speaker preserves his freedom and his status—but also ensures nothing can happen. He wants the attraction without the vulnerability of entering her world. The myrtle theft reveals what this costs: he takes what overhangs the wall, apologizes for it, and leaves. The poem is less about courtship than about the speaker's commitment to never actually committing.

Lowell's Diction: Formal Language as Evasion

Notice how formal and legalistic Lowell's language becomes whenever the speaker discusses boundaries: 'indubitably,' 'by no means,' 'without let or hindrance.' This isn't romantic speech—it's the language of property law and philosophical debate. The speaker intellectualizes desire rather than expressing it, turning the woman into a problem to be analyzed ('A condition not unproductive of charm if viewed philosophically').

The poem's structure mirrors this evasion. By repeating the opening stanza verbatim, Lowell traps both speaker and reader in a loop—we end where we started, having learned nothing except that the speaker is committed to not learning anything. The myrtle spray, wound around his sleeve, is the only concrete exchange, and it's acquired through a technical violation of boundaries. Lowell uses formal politeness and philosophical language to expose how the speaker uses these tools to maintain distance while claiming attraction. The poem is about how language itself can be a form of refusal.