Stevie Smith Poems

Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.

Are not the trees green,
...

Drugs made Pauline vague.
She sat one day at the breakfast table
Fingering in a baffled way
The fronds of the maidenhair plant.
...

Walking swiftly with a dreadful duchess,
He smiled too briefly, his face was pale as sand,
He jumped into a taxi when he saw me coming,
Leaving my alone with a private meaning,
...

It was my bridal night I remember,
An old man of seventy-three
I lay with my young bride in my arms,
A girl with t.b.
...

Mother, among the dustbins and the manure
I feel the measure of my humanity, an allure
As of the presence of God, I am sure
...

Tenuous and Precarious
Were my guardians,
Precarious and Tenuous,
Two Romans.
...

Nobody knows what I feel about Freddy
I cannot make anyone understand
I love him sub specie aet ernitaties
I love him out of hand.
...

He said no word of her to us
Nor we of her to him,
But oh it saddened us to see
How wan he grew and thin.
...

Why is the word pretty so underrated?
In November the leaf is pretty when it falls.
The stream grows deep in the woods after rain.
And in the pretty pool the pike stalks.
...