Amy Lowell published “Absence” in 1914, in her collection *Sword Blades and Poppy Seed*, at a moment when she was becoming one of the most energetic voices in the Imagist movement. Imagism called for direct treatment of the subject, no wasted words, and rhythm based on the musical phrase rather than a metronome. Lowell uses those principles to turn a private feeling of longing into a single, physical image: a cup that is cold and hollow, then filled with the speaker’s own blood.
The first stanza builds a moonlit room. The speaker notices the cup before anything else: “Cold and dry are its sides, / Chilled by the wind from the open window.” Wind, moonlight, and the scent of wistaria blossoms enter the room, but they do not warm it. The cup “sparkles white in the moonlight,” lovely and ghostly at the same time. Lowell repeats the idea of emptiness through words such as “empty,” “void,” and “cold,” until the reader can almost feel the hollow space. Then the literal object opens into metaphor with the line “But the cup of my heart is still, / And cold, and empty.” The external scene has been pointing inward all along: the real subject is the speaker’s state in the beloved’s absence.
The second stanza uses the word “When” as a hinge. If the beloved returns, the heart-cup will not simply warm a little. It “brims / Red and trembling with blood, / Heart’s blood for your drinking.” This is not the language of polite affection. It is visceral, sacrificial, and slightly shocking. Love becomes an offering of the self so complete that the beloved is invited to drink the speaker’s soul. The final phrase, “the bitter-sweet taste of a soul,” fuses pleasure with pain and intimacy with vulnerability. The poem’s central idea is that absence drains a person into stillness, while love fills that emptiness so violently that it overflows into self-giving.
Lowell’s construction supports the emotional shift. The poem is written in free verse, with no regular rhyme scheme, but it has a carefully shaped rhythm. The first stanza is full of short, slowed-down clauses and commas that create a breath-held pause. The repeated vowel sounds in “sides,” “chilled,” and “wind” draw out the coldness. The second stanza moves more urgently, especially after the line break at “brims,” which lets the word hover before the red blood surges in. The closing phrase tapers off with the heavy syllables “bitter-sweet” and “soul,” leaving the reader with a mingled aftertaste rather than a neat resolution.
Imagery works by contrast throughout. Moonlight, white sparkle, and pale wistaria blossoms belong to a cool, outside world. The blossoms sway and tap against the wall, alive yet unable to enter the speaker’s inner stillness. In the second stanza, whiteness gives way to red, coldness to trembling, emptiness to brimming. The key words are simple — “cold,” “void,” “brims,” “trembling,” “bitter-sweet” — but they gain force because Lowell places them sparingly. Even the strange, old-fashioned spelling “wistaria” reinforces the “strange scent” that fills the room.
The poem matters because of its compression and emotional risk. In fifteen lines, Lowell makes absence feel bodily and makes love feel like both nourishment and wounding. She expresses desire with a directness that was bold for a woman poet in the early twentieth century, refusing to soften longing into pretty sentiment. A simple cup carries the entire movement from cold moonlight to warm, dangerous blood, and absence becomes something visible, touchable, and almost drinkable.