Harmonium
Harmonium
_by_ Wallace Stevens
New York Alfred · A · Knopf Mcmxxiii
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
_Published, September, 1923_
_To_ _MY WIFE_
The poems in this book, with the exception of _The Comedian as the Letter C_ and a few others, have been published before in _Others_, _Secession_, _Rogue_, _The Soil_, _The Modern School_, _Broom_, _Contact_, _The New Republic_, _The Measure_, _The Little Review_, _The Dial_, and particularly in _Poetry: A Magazine of Verse_, of Chicago, edited by Harriet Monroe.
Earthy Anecdote 15
Invective against Swans 16
In the Carolinas 17
The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage 18
The Plot against the Giant 20
Infanta Marina 21
Domination of Black 22
The Snow Man 24
The Ordinary Women 25
The Load of Sugar-Cane 27
Le Monocle de Mon Oncle 28
Nuances of a Theme by Williams 34
Metaphors of a Magnifico 35
Ploughing on Sunday 36
Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges 37
Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores 39
Fabliau of Florida 40
The Doctor of Geneva 41
Another Weeping Woman 42
Homunculus et la Belle Etoile 43
The Comedian as the Letter C 46
The World without Imagination 47
Concerning the Thunderstorms of Yucatan 50
Approaching Carolina 54
The Idea of a Colony 58
A Nice Shady Home 62
And Daughters with Curls 66
From the Misery of Don Joost 70
O, Florida, Venereal Soil 71
Last Looks at the Lilacs 73
The Worms at Heaven’s Gate 74
The Jack-Rabbit 75
Valley Candle 76
Anecdote of Men by the Thousand 77
The Silver Plough-Boy 78
The Apostrophe to Vincentine 79
Floral Decorations for Bananas 81
Anecdote of Canna 83
Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds 84
Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb 85
Of the Surface of Things 86
Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks 87
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman 89
The Place of the Solitaires 90
The Weeping Burgher 91
The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician 92
Banal Sojourn 93
Depression before Spring 94
The Emperor of Ice-Cream 95
The Cuban Doctor 96
Tea at the Palaz of Hoon 97
Exposition of the Contents of a Cab 98
Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock 99
Sunday Morning 100
The Virgin Carrying a Lantern 105
Stars at Tallapoosa 106
Explanation 107
Six Significant Landscapes 108
Bantams in Pine-Woods 111
Anecdote of the Jar 112
Palace of the Babies 113
Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs 114
Jasmine’s Beautiful Thoughts underneath the Willow 115
Cortège for Rosenbloom 116
Tattoo 118
The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws 119
Life Is Motion 120
Architecture 121
The Wind Shifts 124
Colloquy with a Polish Aunt 125
Gubbinal 126
Two Figures in Dense Violet Night 127
Theory 128
To the One of Fictive Music 129
Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion 131
Peter Quince at the Clavier 132
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 135
Nomad Exquisite 138
Tea 139
To the Roaring Wind 140
Harmonium
Earthy Anecdote
Every time the bucks went clattering Over Oklahoma A firecat bristled in the way.
Wherever they went, They went clattering, Until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the right, Because of the firecat.
Or until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the left, Because of the firecat.
The bucks clattered. The firecat went leaping, To the right, to the left, And Bristled in the way.
Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes And slept.
Invective against Swans
The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks And far beyond the discords of the wind.
A bronze rain from the sun descending marks The death of summer, which that time endures
Like one who scrawls a listless testament Of golden quirks and Paphian caricatures,
Bequeathing your white feathers to the moon And giving your bland motions to the air.
Behold, already on the long parades The crows anoint the statues with their dirt.
And the soul, O ganders, being lonely, flies Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies.
In the Carolinas
The lilacs wither in the Carolinas. Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins. Already the new-born children interpret love In the voices of mothers.
Timeless mother, How is it that your aspic nipples For once vent honey?
_The pine-tree sweetens my body. The white iris beautifies me._
The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage
But not on a shell, she starts, Archaic, for the sea. But on the first-found weed She scuds the glitters, Noiselessly, like one more wave.
She too is discontent And would have purple stuff upon her arms, Tired of the salty harbors, Eager for the brine and bellowing Of the high interiors of the sea.
The wind speeds her, Blowing upon her hands And watery back. She touches the clouds, where she goes In the circle of her traverse of the sea.
Yet this is meagre play In the scurry and water-shine, As her heels foam-- Not as when the goldener nude Of a later day
Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp, In an intenser calm, Scullion of fate, Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly, Upon her irretrievable way.
The Plot against the Giant
_First Girl_
When this yokel comes maundering, Whetting his hacker, I shall run before him, Diffusing the civilest odors Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers. It will check him.
_Second Girl_
I shall run before him, Arching cloths besprinkled with colors As small as fish-eggs. The threads Will abash him.
_Third Girl_
Oh, la ... le pauvre! I shall run before him, With a curious puffing. He will bend his ear then. I shall whisper Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals. It will undo him.
Infanta Marina
Her terrace was the sand And the palms and the twilight.
She made of the motions of her wrist The grandiose gestures Of her thought.
The rumpling of the plumes Of this creature of the evening Came to be sleights of sails Over the sea.
And thus she roamed In the roamings of her fan,
Partaking of the sea, And of the evening, As they flowed around And uttered their subsiding sound.
Domination of Black
At night, by the fire, The colors of the bushes And of the fallen leaves, Repeating themselves, Turned in the room, Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks Came striding. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
The colors of their tails Were like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, In the twilight wind. They swept over the room, Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks Down to the ground. I heard them cry--the peacocks. Was it a cry against the twilight Or against the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, Turning as the flames Turned in the fire, Turning as the tails of the peacocks Turned in the loud fire, Loud as the hemlocks Full of the cry of the peacocks? Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?
Out of the window, I saw how the planets gathered Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. I saw how the night came, Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks. I felt afraid. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
The Ordinary Women
Then from their poverty they rose, From dry catarrhs, and to guitars They flitted Through the palace walls.
They flung monotony behind, Turned from their want, and, nonchalant, They crowded The nocturnal halls.
The lacquered loges huddled there Mumbled zay-zay and a-zay, a-zay. The moonlight Fubbed the girandoles.
And the cold dresses that they wore, In the vapid haze of the window-bays, Were tranquil As they leaned and looked
From the window-sills at the alphabets, At beta b and gamma g, To study The canting curlicues
Of heaven and of the heavenly script. And there they read of marriage-bed. Ti-lill-o! And they read right long.
The gaunt guitarists on the strings Rumbled a-day and a-day, a-day. The moonlight Rose on the beachy floors.
How explicit the coiffures became, The diamond point, the sapphire point, The sequins Of the civil fans!
Insinuations of desire, Puissant speech, alike in each, Cried quittance To the wickless halls.
Then from their poverty they rose, From dry guitars, and to catarrhs They flitted Through the palace walls.
The Load of Sugar-Cane
The going of the glade-boat Is like water flowing;
Like water flowing Through the green saw-grass, Under the rainbows;
Under the rainbows That are like birds, Turning, bedizened,
While the wind still whistles As kildeer do,
When they rise At the red turban Of the boatman.
Le Monocle de Mon Oncle