The Florist Wears Knee-Breeches
My flowers are reflected
In your mind
As you are reflected in your glass.
When you look at them,
There is nothing in your mind
Except the reflections
Of my flowers.
But when I look at them
I see only the reflections
In your mind,
And not my flowers.
It is my desire
To bring roses,
And place them before you
In a white dish.
This poem is in the public domain.
“The Florist Wears Knee-Breeches” was first published in March of 1916 in Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, a New York City based magazine which focused on modernist poetry. The poem was posthumously published in the collection Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose (Knopf, 1957).
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879. He attended Harvard University as an undergraduate from 1897 to 1900. He planned to travel to Paris and work as a writer, but, after working briefly as a reporter for the New York Herald Times, he decided to study law. Stevens graduated with a degree from New York Law School in 1903 and was admitted to the bar the following year. He practiced law in New York City until 1916.