Wallace Stevens

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver Of the straw-paper,
And pick At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads Of your necklace,

The lilacs wither in the Carolinas
Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins
Already the new-born children interpret
In the voices of mothers

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,

It is true that the rivers went nosing like swine,
Tugging at banks, until they
Bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs,
That the air was heavy with the breath of these swine,

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...

The houses are
By white night-gowns
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,

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,

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

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

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...

One chemical afternoon in mid-autumn,
When the grand mechanics of earth and sky were near;
Even the leaves of the locust were yellow then,
He walked with his year-old boy on his shoulder

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