Wallace Stevens

Valley Candle

My candle burned alone in an immense valley. Beams of the huge night converged upon it, Until the wind blew. The beams of the huge night Converged upon its image, Until the wind blew.

First Girl When this yokel comes maundering, Whetting his hacker, I shall run before him, Diffusing the civilest odors Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers. It will check him. Second Girl I shall run

Sunday Morning

1 Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. She

The River Of Rivers In Connecticut

There is a great river this side of Stygia Before one comes to the first black cataracts And trees that lack the intelligence of trees. In that river, far this side of Stygia, The

Disillusionment Of Ten O'clock

The houses are haunted By white night-gowns. None are green, Or purple with green rings, Or green with yellow rings, Or yellow with blue rings. None of them are strange, With socks of lace

A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts

The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur- There was the cat slopping its milk all day,

Tattoo

The light is like a spider. It crawls over the water. It crawls over the edges of the snow. It crawls under your eyelids And spreads its webs there Its two webs. The webs

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain

There it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him

To The One Of Fictive Music

Sister and mother and diviner love, And of the sisterhood of the living dead Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom, And of the fragrant mothers the most dear And queen, and

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the black bird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird

Peter Quince At The Clavier

I Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the self-same sounds On my spirit make a music, too. Music is feeling, then, not sound; And thus it is that what I

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, The conscience is converted into palms, Like windy citherns hankering

The Emperor Of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the

Domination Of Black

At night, by the fire, The colors of the bushes And of the fallen leaves, Repeating themselves, Turned in the room, Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. Yes: but the color of

Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good. This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is

Nomad Exquisite

As the immense dew of Florida Brings forth The big-finned palm And green vine angering for life, As the immense dew of Florida Brings forth hymn and hymn From the beholder, Beholding all these

The Idea Of Order At Key West

She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

Looking Across The Fields And Watching The Birds Fly

Among the more irritating minor ideas Of Mr. Homburg during his visits home To Concord, at the edge of things, was this: To think away the grass, the trees, the clouds, Not to transform

The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The Well Dressed Man With A Beard

After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends. No was the night. Yes is this present sun. If the rejected things, the things denied, Slid over

The Planet On The Table

Ariel was glad he had written his poems. They were of a remembered time Or of something seen that he liked. Other makings of the sun Were waste and welter And the ripe shrub

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man

The old brown hen and the old blue sky, Between the two we live and die The broken cartwheel on the hill. As if, in the presence of the sea, We dried our nets

Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter, In March, a scrawny cry from outside Seemed like a sound in his mind. He knew that he heard it, A bird’s cry, at daylight or before, In

Anecdote Of The Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The

Poem Written At Morning

A sunny day’s complete Poussiniana Divide it from itself. It is this or that And it is not. By metaphor you paint A thing. Thus, the pineapple was a leather fruit, A fruit for

The Sense Of The Sleight-Of-Hand Man

One’s grand flights, one’s Sunday baths, One’s tootings at the weddings of the soul Occur as they occur. So bluish clouds Occurred above the empty house and the leaves Of the rhododendrons rattled their

Six Significant Landscapes

I An old man sits In the shadow of a pine tree In China. He sees larkspur, Blue and white, At the edge of the shadow, Move in the wind. His beard moves in

Of Modern Poetry

The poem of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice. It has not always had To find: the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre

Metaphors Of A Magnifico

Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village. This is old song That will not

A Postcard From The Volcano

Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill; And that in autumn, when the grapes Made sharp air sharper by their smell These

Gray Room

Although you sit in a room that is gray, Except for the silver Of the straw-paper, And pick At your pale white gown; Or lift one of the green beads Of your necklace, To

Bantams In Pine-Woods

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan Of tan with henna hackles, halt! Damned universal cock, as if the sun Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail. Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.