They Toil Not
Said the lily to the top, will you kindly, kindly stop spinning.
Kay Sage
SourceLicence:Public domain (US, unrenewed)
Said the lily to the top, will you kindly, kindly stop spinning.
Three short lines, and nearly all the fun is in the setup: a flower speaks to a toy. The lily is polite almost to excess. "Kindly, kindly" is how someone talks when they're quietly desperate, and the stretched-out "spinning" at the end sits alone on its line, as if the word itself were going round and round. We can feel the lily's dizziness, or perhaps just its weariness at watching something move without ever going anywhere.
The title offers a clue. "They toil not" echoes a familiar phrase about lilies in the Bible, which are said not to work or spin. That makes the joke sharper: the lily, a creature of stillness, is pestered by a thing that does nothing but spin. The poem sets calm against restless motion, and it plays the clash for gentle comedy rather than conflict. The mood is light, dry, and a little absurd, like a tiny scene from a children's story told with a straight face.