VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, FEBRUARY 1990
Copyright © 1923, 1931, 1935, 1937, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1954 by Wallace Stevens
Copyright renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1954.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stevens, Wallace, 1879-1955.
The collected poems of Wallace Stevens.
Originally published: New York Knopf, 1954.
I. Title.
PS3537.T4753 1982 811′.52 82-4735
eISBN: 978-0-307-79187-0 AACR2
v3.1
PHOTOGRAPH BY SYLVIA SALMI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
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 Mon 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 Étoile
The Comedian as the Letter C
I. The World without Imagination
II. Concerning the Thunderstorms of Yucatan
III. Approaching Carolina
IV. The Idea of a Colony
V. A Nice Shady Home
VI. And Daughters with Curls
From the Misery of Don Joost
O 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
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
Cortège 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
In the Clear Season of Grapes
Two at Norfolk
Indian River
Tea
To the Roaring Wind
IDEAS OF ORDER
Farewell to Florida
Ghosts as Cocoons
Sailing after Lunch
Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz
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
Nudity at the Capital
Nudity in the Colonies
Re-statement of Romance
The Reader
Mud Master
Anglais Mort à Florence
The Pleasures of Merely Circulating
Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery
A Postcard from the Volcano
Autumn Refrain
A Fish-Scale Sunrise
Gallant Château
Delightful Evening
THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR
The Man with the Blue Guitar
A Thought Revolved
I. 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
The Glass of Water
Add This to Rhetoric
Dry Loaf
Idiom of the Hero
The Man on the Dump
On the Road Home
The Latest Freed Man
United Dames of America
Country Words
The Dwarf
A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts
Loneliness in Jersey City
Anything Is Beautiful if You Say It Is
A Weak Mind in the Mountains
The Bagatelles the Madrigals
Girl in a Nightgown
Connoisseur of Chaos
The Blue Buildings in the Summer Air
Dezembrum
Poem Written at Morning
Thunder by the Musician
The Common Life
The Sense of the Sleight-of-hand Man
The Candle a Saint
A Dish of Peaches in Russia
Arcades of Philadelphia the Past
Of Hartford in a Purple Light
Cuisine Bourgeoise
Forces, the Will & the Weather
On an Old Horn
Bouquet of Belle Scavoi
r
Variations on a Summer Day
Yellow Afternoon
Martial Cadenza
Man and Bottle
Of Modern Poetry
Arrival at the Waldorf
Landscape with Boat
On the Adequacy of Landscape
Les Plus Belles Pages
Poem with Rhythms
Woman Looking at a Vase of Flowers
The Well Dressed Man with a Beard
Of Bright & Blue Birds & the Gala Sun
Mrs. Alfred Uruguay
Asides on the Oboe
Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas
Montrachet-le-Jardin
The News and the Weather
Metamorphosis
Contrary Theses (I)
Phosphor Reading by His Own Light
The Search for Sound Free from Motion
Jumbo
Contrary Theses (II)
The Hand as a Being
Oak Leaves Are Hands
Examination of the Hero in a Time of War
TRANSPORT TO SUMMER
God Is Good. It Is a Beautiful Night
Certain Phenomena of Sound
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
Somnambulisma
Crude Foyer
Repetitions of a Young Captain
The Creations of Sound
Holiday in Reality
Esthétique du Mal
The Bed of Old John Zeller
Less and Less Human, O 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 José Rodríguez-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
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 Anacharsis
The Dove in the Belly
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
It Must Be Abstract
It Must Change
It Must Give Pleasure
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
Celle Qui Fût Héaulmiette
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
I. Tom McGreery, 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
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 Mountain
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 World as Meditation
Long and Sluggish Lines
A Quiet Normal Life
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
The Rock
Seventy Years Later
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
Index of Titles of Poems
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
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 a
bove 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 scrurry 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