Wallace Stevens

“Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds,
O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon,
There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill

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 and mended

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

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

Day creeps down
The moon is creeping up
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche Places there, a bouquet
Ho-ho

After the final no there comes a
And on that yes the future world depends
No was the night
Yes is this present sun

An old man
In the shadow of a pine
In China
He sees larkspur,

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

You dweller in the dark cabin,
To whom the watermelon is always purple,
Whose garden is wind and moon,
Of the two dreams, night and day,

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
II The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds
It was a small part of the pan...

One's grand flights, one's Sunday baths,
One's tootings at the weddings of the
Occur as they occur
So bluish

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 had a being, breathing frost;
And least will guess that wit...

To sing jubilas at exact, accustomed times,
To be crested and wear the mane of a multitude And so, as part, to exult with its great throat,
To speak of joy and to sing of it, borne on The shoulders of joyous men, to feel the heart That i...

A sunny day's complete
Divide it from itself
It is this or
And it is not

Light the first light of
In which we rest and, for small reason,
The world imagined is the ultimate good
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous

Go on, high ship, since now, upon the shore,
The snake has left its skin upon the floor
Key West sank downward under massive clouds And silvers and greens spread over the sea
The moon Is at the mast-head and the past is dead