Chinese porcelains
Lowell studied Asian art extensively and owned Chinese ceramics. The specific pink—celadon glazes—was prized for being impossible to reproduce in Western pottery.
pale blue larkspur
The shift from exotic peonies to common garden larkspur. Blue beats pink—the ordinary flower matters more than the rare one.
Other Summers—
The dash creates a pause before memory floods in. The capital S makes specific summers into a proper noun—particular lost times.
Reading Notes
Why Repeat the Entire Poem?
The poem appears twice, identical. This isn't a printing error—it's the structure. Afterglow means light that remains after the source is gone, and Lowell makes you experience that by forcing re-reading. The second time through, you already know the larkspur wins, you already hear the cricket. You're reading a memory of reading the poem.
The repetition also mimics obsessive remembering. When grief or longing hits, you don't think something once and move on—you loop. The same images return: peonies, larkspur, cricket. The same summer plays again. By stanza two, you're not reading about memory; you're trapped in one.
Lowell published this in 1919, after her partner Ada Russell's health declined. The "my Dear" (capitalized, intimate) and the "Other Summers" point to specific lost time with a specific person. The form enacts what the content describes: an afterglow you can't stop looking at.
The Swerve at 'But'
The poem sets up aesthetic appreciation—peonies like Chinese porcelain, wonderful, glowing—then swerves hard at "But, my Dear." That comma after "But" is crucial. It's not "but my dear friend" (address). It's "but, [listen] my Dear" (intimacy + correction). The speaker is talking to someone who might admire the peonies, and she's saying: *you're looking at the wrong thing*.
Larkspur vs. peonies is common vs. exotic, native vs. imported, blue vs. pink. Larkspur is a cottage garden flower, nothing special. But it "swings windily against my heart"—that physical verb, swings, makes the flower hit her chest. Not metaphorically touches. Literally swings in wind and strikes. The peonies glow at a distance like art objects. The larkspur makes contact.
The cricket is the third element: sound, not sight. After two flowers described by color, we get an auditory memory. Crickets mean late summer, dusk, the end of things. The poem moves from visual beauty (peonies) to physical sensation (larkspur swinging) to sound (cricket)—and then stops. No resolution. Just the afterglow of "Other Summers" that won't fade.