Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens Week 3 | 2/4/16 Poet(s) of the Week: Robert Frost Major...

Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

Week 3 | 2/4/16

Poet(s) of the Week: Robert FrostMajor Poem: Sunday Morning 53

Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock 52; Six Significant Landscapes 58; Anecdote of the Jar 60; Life is Motion 65; Tattoo 64; To the One of Fictive Music 70; Peter Quince at the Clavier 72; Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 74; The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad 81; Sea Surface Full of Clouds 82; The Idea of Order at Key West 105; The Sun This March 108; Evening Without Angels 111

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Poet(s) of the Week: Robert Frost (1874-1963) [Presentation TBA]


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Robert Frost (1874-1963)



Letter to Harriet Monroe (1935)



Letter to Harriet Monroe (1954)



Thoughts on Poetry from Robert Frost

“The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love.”

“A poem is a momentary stay against confusion.”

“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.”

“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”

“Free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”

“I was the sort of poet who wished to be understood.”—Robert Frost

“The trouble with you, Robert, is that you the visible too easy to see.”—Wallace Stevens (source unknown)



After Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a treeToward heaven still,And there's a barrel that I didn't fillBeside it, and there may be two or threeApples I didn't pick upon some bough.But I am done with apple-picking now.Essence of winter sleep is on the night,The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.I cannot rub the strangeness from my sightI got from looking through a pane of glassI skimmed this morning from the drinking troughAnd held against the world of hoary grass.It melted, and I let it fall and break.But I was wellUpon my way to sleep before it fell,And I could tellWhat form my dreaming was about to take.Magnified apples appear and disappear,Stem end and blossom end,And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar binThe rumbling soundOf load on load of apples coming in.For I have had too muchOf apple-picking: I am overtiredOf the great harvest I myself desired.There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.For allThat struck the earth,No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,Went surely to the cider-apple heapAs of no worth.

One can see what will troubleThis sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.Were he not gone,The woodchuck could say whether it's like hisLong sleep, as I describe its coming on,Or just some human sleep.



Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,And spills the upper boulders in the sun;And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.The work of hunters is another thing:I have come after them and made repairWhere they have left not one stone on a stone,But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,No one has seen them made or heard them made,But at spring mending-time we find them there.I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;And on a day we meet to walk the lineAnd set the wall between us once again.We keep the wall between us as we go.To each the boulders that have fallen to each.And some are loaves and some so nearly ballsWe have to use a spell to make them balance:"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,One on a side. It comes to little more:There where it is we do not need the wall:He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonderIf I could put a notion in his head:"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't itWhere there are cows? But here there are no cows.Before I built a wall I'd ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling out,And to whom I was like to give offence.Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,But it's not elves exactly, and I'd ratherHe said it for himself. I see him thereBringing a stone grasped firmly by the topIn each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.He moves in darkness as it seems to me,Not of woods only and the shade of trees.He will not go behind his father's saying,And he likes having thought of it so wellHe says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."



Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by the watchman on his beatAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;And further still at an unearthly height,One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.



Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound's the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.

How NOT to Read a Poem



Mrs. D. was an imperious, white-haired woman who not only gave extra credit for every symbol we could find in The House of the Seven Gables (the chickens in the back yard = repressed sexuality, etc.) but concocted a humiliating scheme in which 11-A students would tutor 11-Bers, including me, thereby allowing close acquaintances to be more than ordinarily supercilious and condescending to their about-to-become-former-friend. The highlight of the year, however, was our discussion of Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." The poem, we were told, and we had to regurgitate what we "learned" on a subsequent test, is about Santa Claus; indeed Kris Kringle is the speaker, taking a break "without a farm house near" to contemplate the work that yet lies ahead in delivering all those presents. (The "little horse" is, of course, really a reindeer; he thinks it odd to pause in an empty field because there is no house to deliver presents to; the speaker has "miles to go before [he] sleeps" because he has "promises to keep" to all those little boys and girls, etc.—you get the idea.) Though not yet literary, not yet even a reader, I smelled a rat. Such an approach seemed silly.



How silly I realized only recently, while teaching introduction to literature at Middle Tennessee State University. In the required text, Michael Meyer's comprehensive Bedford Introduction to Literature, I was surprised to find an excerpt from Herbert R. Coursen, Jr.'s "The Ghost of Christmas Past: 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,'" an essay, originally published in College English in 1962, four years before I suffered through Mrs. D's class. A parody of poetic interpretation, a "how not to do it" guide, Coursen's essay had evidently been misread by Mrs. D. with all the literalism of the British audience of Swift's "Modest Proposal." She didn't get the joke, and she passed on her lack of discernment to us. All over Western Pennsylvania there are probably hundreds of people now in their fifties who think the poem is about Santa Claus.



College English (December 1962).

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land's.She was our land more than a hundred yearsBefore we were her people. She was oursIn Massachusetts, in Virginia,But we were England's, still colonials,Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,Possessed by what we now no more possessed.Something we were withholding made us weakUntil we found out that it was ourselvesWe were withholding from our land of living,And forthwith found salvation in surrender.Such as we were we gave ourselves outright(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)To the land vaguely realizing westward,But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,Such as she was, such as she would become.

1942

Robert Frost (1874-1963)Major American Writers:

Wallace Stevens


Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock (52)

The houses are hauntedBy 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 laceAnd beaded ceintures.People are not goingTo dream of baboons and periwinkles.Only, here and there, an old sailor,Drunk and asleep in his boots,Catches TigersIn red weather.

September 1915


http://dictionary.reference.com/


Six Significant Landscapes (58) IAn old man sitsIn the shadow of a pine treeIn China.He sees larkspur,Blue and white,At the edge of the shadow,Move in the wind.His beard moves in the wind.The pine tree moves in the wind.Thus water flowsOver weeds.




Six Significant Landscapes IIThe night is of the colorOf a woman's arm:Night, the female,Obscure,Fragrant and supple,Conceals herself.A pool shines,Like a braceletShaken in a dance.




Six Significant Landscapes IIII measure myselfAgainst a tall tree.I find that I am much taller,For I reach right up to the sun,With my eye;And I reach to the shore of the seaWith my ear.Nevertheless, I dislikeThe way ants crawlIn and out of my shadow.




Six Significant Landscapes IVWhen my dream was near the moon,The white folds of its gownFilled with yellow light.The soles of its feetGrew red.Its hair filledWith certain blue crystallizationsFrom stars,Not far off.




Six Significant Landscapes VNot all the knives of the lamp-posts,Nor the chisels of the long streets,Nor the mallets of the domesAnd high towers,Can carveWhat one star can carve,Shining through the grape-leaves.




Six Significant Landscapes VIRationalists, wearing square hats,Think, in square rooms,Looking at the floor,Looking at the ceiling.They confine themselvesTo right-angled triangles.If they tried rhomboids,Cones, waving lines, ellipses —As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon —Rationalists would wear sombreros.




Anecdote of the Jar (60) I placed a jar in Tennessee,And round it was, upon a hill.It made the slovenly wildernessSurround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it,And sprawled around, no longer wild.The jar was round upon the groundAnd tall and of a port in air. It took dominion everywhere.The jar was gray and bare.It did not give of bird or bush,Like nothing else in Tennessee.

October 1919

Hibbard, Alan. " Teaching 'Anecdote of a Jar' in Tennessee." Tennessee English Journal (1991): 25-27.




Life Is Motion (65)

In Oklahoma,Bonnie and Josie,Dressed in calico,Danced around a stump.They cried,"Ohoyaho,Ohoo" ...Celebrating the marriageOf flesh and air.




Tattoo (64) The light is like a spider.It crawls over the water.It crawls over the edges of the snow.It crawls under your eyelidsAnd spreads its webs there—Its two webs. The webs of your eyesAre fastenedTo the flesh and bones of youAs to rafters or grass. There are filaments of your eyesOn the surface of the waterAnd in the edges of the snow.




To The One Of Fictive Music (70) Sister and mother and diviner love,And of the sisterhood of the living deadMost near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom,And of the fragrant mothers the most dearAnd queen, and of diviner love the dayAnd flame and summer and sweet fire, no threadOf cloudy silver sprinkles in your gownIts venom of renown, and on your headNo crown is simpler than the simple hair. Now, of the music summoned by the birthThat separates us from the wind and sea,Yet leaves us in them, until earth becomes,By being so much of the things we are,Gross effigy and simulacrum, noneGives motion to perfection more sereneThan yours, out of our own imperfections wrought,Most rare, or ever of more kindred airIn the laborious weaving that you wear.

November 1922




To The One Of Fictive Music (70)For so retentive of themselves are menThat music is intensest which proclaimsThe near, the clear, and vaunts the clearest bloom,And of all the vigils musing the obscure,That apprehends the most which sees and names,As in your name, an image that is sure,Among the arrant spices of the sun,O bough and bush and scented vine, in whomWe give ourselves our likest issuance. Yet not too like, yet not so like to beToo near, too clear, saving a little to endowOur feigning with the strange unlike, whence springsThe difference that heavenly pity brings.For this, musician, in your girdle fixedBear other perfumes. On your pale head wearA band entwining, set with fatal stones.Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:The imagination that we spurned and crave.




Peter Quince at the Clavier (72) IJust as my fingers on these keysMake music, so the self-same soundsOn my spirit make a music, too.Music is feeling, then, not sound;And thus it is that what I feel,Here in this room, desiring you, Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,Is music. It is like the strainWaked in the elders by Susanna; Of a green evening, clear and warm,She bathed in her still garden, whileThe red-eyed elders, watching, felt The basses of their beings throbIn witching chords, and their thin bloodPulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

August 1915

King James Text

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=4125824




Peter Quince at the Clavier

IIIn the green water, clear and warm,Susanna lay.She searchedThe touch of springs,And foundConcealed imaginings.She sighed,For so much melody. Upon the bank, she stoodIn the coolOf spent emotions.She felt, among the leaves,The dewOf old devotions.




Peter Quince at the Clavier She walked upon the grass,Still quavering.The winds were like her maids,On timid feet,Fetching her woven scarves,Yet wavering. A breath upon her handMuted the night.She turned —A cymbal crashed,Amid roaring horns. IIISoon, with a noise like tambourines,Came her attendant Byzantines. They wondered why Susanna criedAgainst the elders by her side;

Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari, Susannah and the

Elders




Peter Quince at the Clavier And as they whispered, the refrainWas like a willow swept by rain. Anon, their lamps' uplifted flameRevealed Susanna and her shame. And then, the simpering ByzantinesFled, with a noise like tambourines. IVBeauty is momentary in the mind —The fitful tracing of a portal;But in the flesh it is immortal.




Peter Quince at the Clavier The body dies; the body's beauty lives.So evenings die, in their green going,A wave, interminably flowing.So gardens die, their meek breath scentingThe cowl of winter, done repenting.So maidens die, to the auroralCelebration of a maiden's choral. Susanna's music touched the bawdy stringsOf those white elders; but, escaping,Left only Death's ironic scraping.Now, in its immortality, it playsOn the clear viol of her memory,And makes a constant sacrament of praise.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (74) IAmong twenty snowy mountains,The only moving thingWas the eye of the black bird.

December 1917




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird III was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird IIIThe blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.It was a small part of the pantomime.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird IVA man and a womanAre one.A man and a woman and a blackbirdAre one.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird VI do not know which to prefer,The beauty of inflectionsOr the beauty of innuendoes,The blackbird whistlingOr just after.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird VIIcicles filled the long windowWith barbaric glass.The shadow of the blackbirdCrossed it, to and fro.The moodTraced in the shadowAn indecipherable cause.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird VIIO thin men of Haddam,Why do you imagine golden birds?Do you not see how the blackbirdWalks around the feetOf the women about you?




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird VIIII know noble accentsAnd lucid, inescapable rhythms;But I know, too,That the blackbird is involvedIn what I know.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird IXWhen the blackbird flew out of sight,It marked the edgeOf one of many circles.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird XAt the sight of blackbirdsFlying in a green light,Even the bawds of euphonyWould cry out sharply.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird XIHe rode over ConnecticutIn a glass coach.Once, a fear pierced him,In that he mistookThe shadow of his equipageFor blackbirds.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird XIIThe river is moving.The blackbird must be flying.




Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird XIIIIt was evening all afternoon.It was snowingAnd it was going to snow.The blackbird satIn the cedar-limbs.




The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad (81) The time of year has grown indifferent.Mildew of summer and the deepening snowAre both alike in the routine I know:I am too dumbly in my being pent. The wind attendant on the solsticesBlows on the shutters of the metropoles,Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tollsThe grand ideas of the villages. The malady of the quotidian . . .Perhaps if summer ever came to restAnd lengthened, deepened, comforted, caressedThrough days like oceans in obsidian Horizons, full of night's midsummer blaze;Perhaps, if winter once could penetrateThrough all its purples to the final slate,Persisting bleakly in an icy haze;

One might in turn become less diffident,Out of such mildew plucking neater mouldAnd spouting new orations of the cold.One might. One might. But time will not relent.




IIn that November off Tehuantepec,The slopping of the sea grew still one nightAnd in the morning summer hued the deck

And made one think of rosy chocolateAnd gilt umbrellas. Paradisal greenGave suavity to the perplexed machine

Of ocean, which like limpid water lay.Who, then, in that ambrosial latitudeOut of the light evolved the morning blooms,

Who, then, evolved the sea-blooms from the cloudsDiffusing balm in that Pacific calm?C’était mon enfant, mon bijou, mon âme.

The sea-clouds whitened far below the calmAnd moved, as blooms move, in the swimming greenAnd in its watery radiance, while the hue

Of heaven in an antique reflection rolledRound those flotillas. And sometimes the seaPoured brilliant iris on the glistening blue.

Sea Surface Full of Clouds (82)

July 1924



IIIn that November off TehuantepecThe slopping of the sea grew still one night.At breakfast jelly yellow streaked the deck

And made one think of chop-house chocolateAnd sham umbrellas. And a sham-like greenCapped summer-seeming on the tense machine

Of ocean, which in sinister flatness lay.Who, then, beheld the rising of the cloudsThat strode submerged in that malevolent sheen,

Who saw the mortal massives of the bloomsOf water moving on the water-floor?C’était mon frère du ciel, ma vie, mon or.

The gongs rang loudly as the windy boomsHoo-hooed it in the darkened ocean-blooms.The gongs grew still. And then blue heaven spread

Its crystalline pendentives on the seaAnd the macabre of the water-gloomsIn an enormous undulation fled.


Sea Surface Full of Clouds



IIIIn that November off Tehuantepec,The slopping of the sea grew still one nightAnd a pale silver patterned on the deck

And made one think of porcelain chocolateAnd pied umbrellas. An uncertain green,Piano-polished, held the tranced machine

Of ocean, as a prelude holds and holds,Who, seeing silver petals of white bloomsUnfolding in the water, feeling sure

Of the milk within the saltiest spurge, heard, then,The sea unfolding in the sunken clouds?Oh! C’était mon extase et mon amour.

So deeply sunken were they that the shrouds,The shrouding shadows, made the petals blackUntil the rolling heaven made them blue,

A blue beyond the rainy hyacinth,And smiting the crevasses of the leavesDeluged the ocean with a sapphire blue.





IVIn that November off TehuantepecThe night-long slopping of the sea grew still.A mallow morning dozed upon the deck

And made one think of musky chocolateAnd frail umbrellas. A too-fluent greenSuggested malice in the dry machine

Of ocean, pondering dank stratagem.Who then beheld the figures of the cloudsLike blooms secluded in the thick marine?

Like blooms? Like damasks that were shaken offFrom the loosed girdles in the spangling must.C’était ma foi, la nonchalance divine.

The nakedness would rise and suddenly turnSalt masks of beard and mouths of bellowing,Would—But more suddenly the heaven rolled

Its bluest sea-clouds in the thinking green,And the nakedness became the broadest blooms,Mile-mallows that a mallow sun cajoled.





VIn that November off TehuantepecNight stilled the slopping of the sea.The day came, bowing and voluble, upon the deck,

Good clown… One thought of Chinese chocolateAnd large umbrellas. And a motley greenFollowed the drift of the obese machine

Of ocean, perfected in indolence.What pistache one, ingenious and droll,Beheld the sovereign clouds as jugglery

And the sea as turquoise-turbaned Sambo, neatAt tossing saucers—cloudy-conjuring sea?C’était mon esprit bâtard, l’ignominie.

The sovereign clouds came clustering. The conchOf loyal conjuration trumped. The windOf green blooms turning crisped the motley hue

To clearing opalescence. Then the seaAnd heaven rolled as one and from the twoCame fresh transfigurings of freshest blue.






The Idea of Order at Key West (105) She sang beyond the genius of the sea.The water never formed to mind or voice,Like a body wholly body, flutteringIts empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motionMade constant cry, caused constantly a cry,That was not ours although we understood,Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.The sea was not a mask. No more was she.The song and water were not medleyed soundEven if what she sang was what she heard,Since what she sang was uttered word by word.It may be that in all her phrases stirredThe grinding water and the gasping wind;But it was she and not the sea we heard.

October 1934




The Idea of Order at Key West For she was the maker of the song she sang.The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured seaWas merely a place by which she walked to sing.Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knewIt was the spirit that we sought and knewThat we should ask this often as she sang. If it was only the dark voice of the seaThat rose, or even colored by many waves;If it was only the outer voice of skyAnd cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,However clear, it would have been deep air,The heaving speech of air, a summer soundRepeated in a summer without endAnd sound alone. But it was more than that,More even than her voice, and ours, among




The Idea of Order at Key West The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heapedOn high horizons, mountainous atmospheresOf sky and sea.It was her voice that madeThe sky acutest at its vanishing.She measured to the hour its solitude.She was the single artificer of the worldIn which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,Whatever self it had, became the selfThat was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,As we beheld her striding there alone,Knew that there was never a world for herExcept the one she sang and, singing, made. Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,Why, when the singing ended and we turnedToward the town, tell why the glassy lights,




The Idea of Order at Key West The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,As the night descended, tilting in the air,Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,Arranging, deepening, enchanting night. Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,The maker's rage to order words of seaWords of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,And of ourselves and our origins,In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.




The Sun This March (108) The exceeding brightness of this early sunMakes me conceive how dark I have become, And re-illuminates things that used to turnTo gold in broadest blue, and be a part Of a turning spirit in an earlier self.That, too, returns from out the winter's air, Like an hallucination come to dazeThe corner of the eye. Our element, Cold is our element and winter's airBrings voices as of lions coming down. Oh! Rabbi, rabbi, fend my soul for meAnd true savant of this dark nature be.




Evening Without Angels (111)

the great interests of man: air and light,the joy of having a body, the voluptuousnessof looking.—Mario Rossi

Why seraphim like lutanists arrangedAbove the trees? And why the poet asEternal chef d’orchestre? Air is air,Its vacancy glitters round us everywhere.Its sounds are not angelic syllablesBut our unfashioned spirits realizedMore sharply in more furious selves. And lightThat fosters seraphim and is to themCoiffeur of haloes, fecund jeweller—Was the sun concoct for angels or for men?

October 1934




Evening Without Angels Sad men made angels of the sun, and ofThe moon they made their own attendant ghosts,Which led them back to angels, after death. Let this be clear that we are men of sunAnd men of day and never of pointed night,Men that repeat antiquest sounds of airIn an accord of repetitions. Yet,If we repeat, it is because the windEncircling us, speaks always with our speech. Light, too, encrusts us making visibleThe motions of the mind and giving formTo moodiest nothings, as, desire for dayAccomplished in the immensely flashing East,Desire for rest, in that descending seaOf dark, which in its very darkeningIs rest and silence spreading into sleep.




Evening Without Angels . . . Evening, when the measure skips a beatAnd then another, one by one, and allTo a seething minor swiftly modulate.Bare night is best. Bare earth is best. Bare, bare,Except for our own houses, huddled lowBeneath the arches and their spangled air,Beneath the rhapsodies of fire and fire,Where the voice that is in us makes a true response,Where the voice that is great within us rises up,As we stand gazing at the rounded moon.




Major Poem: Sunday Morning (53)

IComplacencies of the peignoir, and lateCoffee and oranges in a sunny chair,And the green freedom of a cockatooUpon a rug mingle to dissipateThe holy hush of ancient sacrifice.She dreams a little, and she feels the darkEncroachment of that old catastrophe,As a calm darkens among water-lights.The pungent oranges and bright, green wingsSeem things in some procession of the dead,Winding across wide water, without sound.The day is like wide water, without sound,Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feetOver the seas, to silent Palestine,Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

November 1915




Major Poem: Sunday Morning

IIWhy should she give her bounty to the dead?What is divinity if it can comeOnly in silent shadows and in dreams?Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or elseIn any balm or beauty of the earth,Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?Divinity must live within herself:Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;Grievings in loneliness, or unsubduedElations when the forest blooms; gustyEmotions on wet roads on autumn nights;All pleasures and all pains, rememberingThe bough of summer and the winter branch.These are the measure destined for her soul.





IIIJove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.No mother suckled him, no sweet land gaveLarge-mannered motions to his mythy mind.He moved among us, as a muttering king,Magnificent, would move among his hinds,Until our blood, commingling, virginal,With heaven, brought such requital to desireThe very hinds discerned it, in a star.Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to beThe blood of paradise? And shall the earthSeem all of paradise that we shall know?The sky will be much friendlier then than now,A part of labor and a part of pain,And next in glory to enduring love,Not this dividing and indifferent blue.





IVShe says, 'I am content when wakened birds,Before they fly, test the realityOf misty fields, by their sweet questionings;But when the birds are gone, and their warm fieldsReturn no more, where, then, is paradise?'There is not any haunt of prophecy,Nor any old chimera of the grave,Neither the golden underground, nor isleMelodious, where spirits gat them home,Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palmRemote on heaven's hill, that has enduredAs April's green endures; or will endureLike her remembrance of awakened birds,Or her desire for June and evening, tippedBy the consummation of the swallow's wings.





VShe says, 'But in contentment I still feelThe need of some imperishable bliss.'Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreamsAnd our desires. Although she strews the leavesOf sure obliteration on our paths,The path sick sorrow took, the many pathsWhere triumph rang its brassy phrase, or loveWhispered a little out of tenderness,She makes the willow shiver in the sunFor maidens who were wont to sit and gazeUpon the grass, relinquished to their feet.She causes boys to pile new plums and pearsOn disregarded plate. The maidens tasteAnd stray impassioned in the littering leaves.





VIIs there no change of death in paradise?Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughsHang always heavy in that perfect sky,Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,With rivers like our own that seek for seasThey never find, the same receding shoresThat never touch with inarticulate pang?Why set pear upon those river-banksOr spice the shores with odors of the plum?Alas, that they should wear our colors there,The silken weavings of our afternoons,And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,Within whose burning bosom we deviseOur earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.





VIISupple and turbulent, a ring of menShall chant in orgy on a summer mornTheir boisterous devotion to the sun,Not as a god, but as a god might be,Naked among them, like a savage source.Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,Out of their blood, returning to the sky;And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,The windy lake wherein their lord delights,The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,That choir among themselves long afterward.They shall know well the heavenly fellowshipOf men that perish and of summer morn.And whence they came and whither they shall goThe dew upon their feet shall manifest.





VIIIShe hears, upon that water without sound,A voice that cries, 'The tomb in PalestineIs not the porch of spirits lingering.It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.'We live in an old chaos of the sun,Or old dependency of day and night,Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,Of that wide water, inescapable.Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quailWhistle about us their spontaneous cries;Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;And, in the isolation of the sky,At evening, casual flocks of pigeons makeAmbiguous undulations as they sink,Downward to darkness, on extended wings.



Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens Week 3 | 2/4/16 Poet(s) of the Week: Robert Frost Major...

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