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"Cloud-clown, blue painter, sun as horn,
Hill-scholar, man that never is,
The bad-bespoken lacker,
Ancestor of Narcissus, prince
Of the secondary men. There are no rocks
And stones, only this imager."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Jumbo." |
"The heavy trees,
The grunting, shuffling branches, the robust,
The nocturnal, the antique, the blue-green pines
Deepen the feelings to inhuman depths."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Parochial Theme." |
"Through centuries he lived in poverty.
God only was his only elegance.
Then generation by generation he grew
Stronger and freer, a little better off.
He lived each life because, if it was bad,
He said a good life would be possible."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "The Good Man Has No Shape." |
"He sought an earthly leader who could stand
Without panache, without cockade,
Son only of man and sun of men,
The outer captain, the inner saint,
The pine, the pillar and the priest,
The voice, the book, the hidden well...."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "A Thought Revolved." |
"It was his nature to suppose,
To receive what others had supposed, without
Accepting. He received what he denied.
But as truth to be accepted, he supposed
A truth beyond all truths."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Landscape with Boat." |
"There's no such thing as life; or if there is,
It is faster than the weather, faster than
Any character. It is more than any scene:
Of the guillotine or of any glamorous hanging."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Parochial Theme." |
"The wind had seized the tree and ha, and ha,
It held the shivering, the shaken limbs,
Then bathed its body in the leaping lake."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "The Hand as a Being." |
"The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me...."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Autumn Refrain." |
"He never supposed divine
Things might not look divine, nor that if nothing
Was divine then all things were, the world itself,
And that if nothing was the truth, then all
Things were the truth, the world itself was the truth."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Landscape with Boat." |
"The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing."
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. Peter Quince at the Clavier (l. 54-56). . .
Collected Poems [Stevie Smith]. James MacGibbon, ed. (1976) New Directions. |
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Wallace Stevens
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