Lyric Poem · Hope

What the Lily Knows

by The QuillOak Editors

Reading room

1The lily spent the winter

2as a brown and folded thing,

3asking nothing, promising less,

4asleep beneath the spring.

5And then, on no one's schedule,

6it opened, white and whole —

7the oldest news still breaking new:

8what looks like loss is not the whole.

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“What the Lily Knows” by The QuillOak Editors — quilloak.com/poems/what-the-lily-knows

Quick facts

Poem: What the Lily Knows
Poet: The QuillOak Editors
Length: 8 lines
Form: Lyric Poem, Rhyming Poems
Themes: Hope, Spring, Nature

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 8 lines · 2 quatrains
End rhyme: ABCB in every stanza — ballad rhyme — only lines 2 and 4 chime.
Line length: Lines run 6-8 syllables (median 8), consistent with tetrameter. No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.

The poem’s silhouette — approximate syllables per line, measured from the text above. Even bars mean a measured line; ragged bars mean the poem sets its own widths.

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Original QuillOak text. Personal sharing is permitted; other reuse requires permission.

Author record: The QuillOak Editorstoday
Source record: QuillOak originalWhat the Lily Knows, authored for QuillOak by The Quillery
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 7e3e1ca2439a667b…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Rhyming Poems Hope Spring Nature

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