Flowers by the Sea

By William Carlos Williams 1883–1963

When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s

edge, unseen, the salt ocean

lifts its form—chicory and daisies

tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone

but color and the movement—or the shape

perhaps—of restlessness, whereas

the sea is circled and sways

peacefully upon its plantlike stem

William Carlos Williams, “Flowers by the Sea” from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol 1:1909-1939. Copyright © 1938 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Source: The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams Vol 1:1909-1939 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1985)

Biography

William Carlos Williams has always been known as an experimenter, an innovator, a revolutionary figure in American poetry. Yet in comparison to artists of his own time who sought a new environment for creativity as expatriates in Europe, Williams lived a remarkably conventional life. A doctor for more than forty years serving the New Jersey town of Rutherford, he relied on his patients, the America around him, and his own . . .

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