The High-Toned Old Christian Woman Poem by Wallace Stevens

The High-Toned Old Christian Woman

Rating: 4.8


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 for hymns.
We agree in principle.That's clear.But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets.Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones.And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began.Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince.But fictive things
Wink as they will.Wink most when widows wince.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Raymond Farrell 12 July 2016

Wishful thinking but I don't think he ever achieved it his Calvanist upbringing always pricked his conscience in some way.

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Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

Pennsylvania / United States
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