Poetry Essay #2

To Paint a Water Lily is a beautiful poem that describes a lily pond and it's surroundings in nature. The speaker, who is trying to paint a picture of a water lily by the title, observes the nature around him. With the use of imagery, structure, and even personification, he is able to portray this picture of nature to the reader.

The speaker initially is observing his main attraction, the lily, when a dragonfly comes into his sight. He admires it, how it eats and how it "stands in space to take aim." As the dragonfly flies away, the speaker seems to take notice of something else going on under the trees. He hears "battle-shouts and death cries everywhere." This use of imagery and personification of nature creates the image of an ongoing battle in nature, yet also how unnoticed it goes by the flies and the lily itself. In the speaker's eyes, there seems to be so much more in the surroundings of the lily, and the lily seems to be unaware of what is going on.

The structure of this poem also gives an insight on to how the speaker is thinking. The stanzas, all made up of  verses of two, seem to be the speaker gathering his thoughts slowly. It's as if he is slowly realizing the reality of what is going on in nature. But it must come to an end. As the poem is almost finished, he comes back to what he is doing, the mission he had in the first place: painting the lily. He focus on it, and even though the battle is inaudible, he is still aware of the presence of it surrounding him. 

The author is clearly intrigued and a bit in awe by the nature that he was surrounded by. His role as an artist is not only to take note of the lily, but the surrounding chaos as well.