The collected poems of wallace stevens

THE

COLLECTED POEMS

OF

WALLACE STEVENS

ALFRED A. KNOPF

NEW YORK 1971


1. C. catalog card number: 54-11750

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THIS IS A. BORZOI BOOK,
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A.. KNOPF, INC.

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COPyright19A3,1931,I935, 193 6,1937,194 A, 1943, 1944,1945, 1946, 1947,
1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1954 by Wallace Stevens. All rights reserved

under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published
in the United States by Alfred A. KnoPf, Inc., New York. Manufactured in
the United States of America and distributed by Random House, Inc. Published in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited.

First Collected Edition Published October 1, 1954
Reprinted nine times
Eleventh printing, February 1971


Contents
HARMONIUM
Earthy Anecdote
Invective against Swans
In the Carolinas
The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage
The Plot against the Giant
Infanta Marina
Domination of Black
The Snow Man
The Ordinary Women
The Load of Sugar-Cane
Le Monocle de Man Oncle
Nuances of a Theme by Williams
Metaphors of a Magnifico
Ploughing on Sunday
Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze
Mille Vierges
Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores
Fabliau of Florida
The Doctor of Geneva
Another Weeping Woman
Homunculus et La Belle Etoile
The Comedian as the Letter C·

I.
The World without Imagination
II. Concerning the Thunderstorms of Yucatan
V

3
4
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
12

13
18

19
20

21
22

23

24
25
25

27
30


III.
IV.
V.
VI.

Approaching Carolina
The Idea of a Colony
A Nice Shady Home
And Daughters with Curls

From the Misery of Don Joost
Florida, Venereal Soil
Last Looks at the Lilacs
The Worms at Heaven's Gate
The Jack-Rabbit
Valley Candle
Anecdote of Men by the Thousand
The Apostrophe to Vincentine
Floral Decorations for Bananas
Anecdote of Canna
On the Manner of Addressing Clouds
Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb
Of the Surface of Things
Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
The Place of the Solitaires

The Weeping Burgher
The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician
Banal Sojourn
Depression before Spring
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
The Cuban Doctor
Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
Disillusionment of Ten O'clock
Sunday Morning
The Virgin Carrying a Lantern
Stars at Tallapoosa
Explanation

o

.

VI

33
36
40
43
46
47
48
49
50
51
51

52
53
55
55
56
57
57
59
60
61
62
62
63
64
64
65
66
66

71
71
7"


Six Significant Landscapes
Bantams in Pine-Woods
Anecdote of the Jar
Palace of the Babies
Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat

Snakes. Men Eat Hogs
Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts underneath the Willow
Cortege for Rosenbloom
Tattoo
The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws
Life Is Motion
The Wind Shifts
Colloquy with a Polish Aunt
Gubbinal
'Two Figures in Dense Violet Night
Theory
To the One of Fictive Music
Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion
Peter Quince at the Clavier
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Nomad Exquisite
The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad
The Death of a Soldier
Negation
The Surprises of the Superhuman
Sea Surface Full of Clouds
The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade
New England Verses
Lunar Paraphrase
Anatomy of Monotony
The Public Square
Sonatina to Hans Christian

..

Vll

73
75
76
77
78
79
79
81
82
83
83
84
85
85
86
87
88
89
92
95
96
97
97
98
98
102

104

107
107
108

109


In the Clear Season of Grapes
Two at Norfolk
Indian River
Tea
To the Roaring Wind

110

III
112
112

IDEAS OF ORDER
Farewell to Florida
Ghosts as Cocoons
Sailing after Lunch
Sad Strains of a Gay \Valtz
Dance of the Macabre Mice
Meditation Celestial &Terrestrial
Lions in Sweden
How to Live. What to Do
Some Friends from Pascagoula

Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu
The Idea of Order at Key West
The American Sublime
Mozart, 1935
Snow and Stars
The Sun This March
Botanist on Alp (NO.1)
Botanist on Alp (No.2)
Evening without Angels
The Brave Man
A Fading of the Sun
Gray Stones and Gray Pigeons
Winter Bells
Academic Discourse at Havana
Vill

117
119
120
121
12 3
12 3
124
12 5
126
12 7
128

13°
13 1

133
133
134

135
13 6
13 8
139
140
141
142


Nudity at the Capital
Nudity in the Colonies
Re-statement of Romance
The Reader
Mud Master
Anglais Mort aFlorence
The Pleasures of Merely Circulating
Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery
A Postcard from the Volcano
Autumn Refrain
A Fish-Scale Sunrise
Gallant Chateau
Delightful Evening

145
145

146
146
147
148
149
15°
15 8
160
160

161
162

THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR
The Man with the Blue Guitar
A Thought Revolved
1.
The Mechanical Optimist
II. Mystic Garden & Middling Beast
III. Romanesque Affabulation
IV. The Leader
The Men That are Falling

PARTS OF A WORLD
Parochial Theme
Poetry Is a Destructive Force
The Poems of Our Climate
Prelude to Objects
Study of Two Pears

.

IX


The Motive for Metaphor
Gigantomachia
Dutch Graves in Bucks County
No Possum, No Sop, No Taters
So-And-So Reclining on Her Couch
Chocorua to Its Neighbor
Poesie Abrutie
The Lack of Repose
Somnambulisma
Crude Foyer
Repetitions of a Young Captain
The Creations of Sound
Holiday in Reality
Esthetique du Mal
The Bed of Old John Zeller
Less and Less Human, 0 Savage Spirit
Wild Ducks, People and Distances
The Pure Good of Theory

All the Preludes to Felicity
Description of a Platonic Person
Fire-Monsters in the Milky Brain
Dry Birds are Fluttering in Blue Leaves
A Word with Jose Rodriguez-Feo
Paisant Chronicle

Sketch of the Ultimate Politician
Flyer's Fall
Jouga
Debris of Life and Mind
Description without Place
Two Tales of Liadoff
Analysis of a Theme
Late Hymn from the Myrrh-Mountain
Xl1

288
289
29°
293
295
296
3°2
30 3
30 4
30 5
306
310
312
313
326
327
328
329
330
33 1

33 2
333
334
335
336
337
33 8
339
346
348
349


Man Carrying Thing
Pieces
A Completely New Set of Objects
Adult Epigram
Two Versions of the Same Poem
Men Made Out of Words
Thinking of a Relation between the Images of
Metaphors
Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm
Continual Conversation with a Silent Man
A Woman Sings a Song for a Soldier Come Home
The Pediment of Appearance
Burghers of Petty Death
Human Arrangement
The Good Man Has No Shape
The Red Fern

From the Packet of Anaclrarsis

350
351
352
353
353
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
365

T~D~~~~~

~

Mountains Covered with Cats
The Prejudice against the Past
Extraordinary References
Attempt to Discover Life
A Lot of People Bathing in a Stream
Credences of Summer

A Pastoral Nun
The Pastor Caballero
Notes toward a Supreme Fiction

367
368
369
370
371
372
378
379

It Must Be Abstract

380
389
398

It Must Change

It Must Give Pleasure
X111


THE AURORAS OF AUTUMN
The Auroras of Autumn
Page from a Tale
Large Red Man Reading
This Solitude of Cataracts

In the Element of Antagonisms
In a Bad Time
The Beginning
The Countryman
The Ultimate Poem Is Abstract
Bouquet of Roses in Sunlight
The Owl in the Sarcophagus
Saint John and the Back-Ache
CelIe Qui Flit Heaulmiette
Imago
A Primitive like an Orb
Metaphor as Degeneration
The Woman in Sunshine
Reply to Papini
The Bouquet
World without Peculiarity
Our Stars Come from Ireland
1. Tom l\!lcGreery, in America, Thinks of Himself

as a Boy
II. The Westwardness of Everything
Puella Parvula
The Novel
What We See Is What We Think
A Golden Woman in a Silver Mirror
The Old Lutheran Bells at Home
Questions Are Remarks

.

XlV

411
421
42 3
424
42 5
426
427
428
429
430
431
436
438
439

440
444
445
446
448
453

454
455
456
457
459
460

461
462


Study of Images I
Study of Images II
An Ordinary Evening in New Haven
Things of August
Angel Surrounded by Paysans

THE ROCK
An Old Man Asleep
The Irish Cliffs of Moher
The Plain Sense of Things
One of the Inhabitants of the West
Lebensweisheitspielerei
The Hermitage at the Centre
The Green Plant
Madame La Fleurie
To an Old Philosopher in Rome
Vacancy in the Park
The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountam
Two Illustrations That the World Is What You
Make It
The Constant Disquisition of the Wind
The World Is Larger in Summer
Prologues to What Is Possible
Looking across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly
Song of Fixed Accord
The W orId as Meditation

Long and Sluggish Lines
A Quiet Normal Life
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

xv

501
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
511
512

513
514
515
517
519
520
522
523
524


The Rock

Seventy Years Later
The Poem as Icon
Forms of the Rock in a Night-Hymn
St. Armorer's Church from the Outside
Note on Moonlight
The Planet on the Table
The River of Rivers in Connecticut
Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself

525
526
528
529
531
532
533
534


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.

3


INVECTIVE AGAINST SWANS
The soul, 0 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, 0 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.

4


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.

5


Yet this is meagre play
In the scrurry and water-shine,
As her heels foamNot 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

6


As small as fish-eggs.
The threads
Will abash him.
Third Girl
Oh, la . . . Ie 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.

7

And thus she roamed
In the roarnings 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

8


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.
10


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,
II


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.
12


LE MONOCLE DE MON ONCLE

"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."
And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.
Or was it that I mocked myself alone?
I wish that I might be a thinking stone.
The sea of spuming thought foists up again
The radiant bubble that she was. And then
A deep up-pouring from some saltier well
Within me, bursts its watery syllable.
II

A red bird flies across the golden floor.
It is a red bird that seeks out his choir
Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing.
A torrent will fall from him when he finds.
Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing?
I am a man of fortune greeting heirs;
For it has come that thus I greet the spring.
These choirs of welcome choir for me farewell.
No spring can follow past meridian.
Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss
·To make believe a starry connaissance.