The Dover Anthology of American Literature Volume II (87 page)

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon
—O swallow swallow

Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

        
Shantih shantih shantih

Source: T. S. Eliot.
The Waste Land.
New York: Horace Liveright, 1922.

1.
“If I did think my answer were to one

Who ever could return unto the world,

This flame should rest unshaken. But since ne'er,

If true be told me, any from his depth

Has found his upward way, I answer thee,

Nor fear lest infamy record the words.”

—
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise. [Hell,
Canto 27. Lines 61-66.] Translated by Henry F. Cary. New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1909.

WALLACE
STEVENS

The insurance executive Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) was one of the century's most original and influential poets. In 1914, at the age of thirty-five, Stevens made his deliberate entry onto the literary scene. As his poems appeared in avant-garde magazines, he gained his reputation as a writer of dazzling language and intellectual badinage. His first book,
Harmonium
(1923), contained the poems in this selection.

Peter
Quince at the Clavier
(1915)

I

                
Just as my fingers on these keys

                
Make music, so the self-same sounds

                
On my spirit make a music, too.

                
Music is feeling, then, not sound;

                
And thus it is that what I feel,

                
Here in this room, desiring you,

                
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,

                
Is music. It is like the strain

                
Waked in the elders by Susanna:

                
Of a green evening, clear and warm,

                
She bathed in her still garden, while

                
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

                
The
basses of their beings throb

                
In witching chords, and their thin blood

                
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

II

                
In the green water, clear and warm,

                
Susanna lay.

                
She searched

                
The touch of springs,

                
And found

                
Concealed imaginings.

                
She sighed,

                
For so much melody.

                
Upon the bank, she stood

                
In the cool

                
Of spent emotions.

                
She felt, among the leaves,

                
The dew

                
Of old devotions.

                
She walked upon the grass,

                
Still quavering.

                
The winds were like her maids,

                
On timid feet,

                
Fetching her woven scarves,

                
Yet wavering.

                
A breath upon her hand

                
Muted the night.

                
She turned—

                
A cymbal crashed,

                
Amid roaring horns.

III

                
Soon, with a noise like tambourines,

                
Came her attendant Byzantines.

                
They
wondered why Susanna cried

                
Against the elders by her side;

                
And as they whispered, the refrain

                
Was like a willow swept by rain.

                
Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame

                
Revealed Susanna and her shame.

                
And then, the simpering Byzantines,

                
Fled, with a noise like tambourines.

IV

                
Beauty is momentary in the mind—

                
The fitful tracing of a portal;

                
But in the flesh it is immortal.

                
The body dies; the body's beauty lives.

                
So evenings die, in their green going,

                
A wave, interminably flowing.

                
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting

                
The cowl of Winter, done repenting.

                
So maidens die, to the auroral

                
Celebration of a maiden's choral.

                
Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings

                
Of those white elders; but, escaping,

                
Left only Death's ironic scraping.

                
Now, in its immortality, it plays

                
On the clear viol of her memory,

                
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

S
OURCE:
Others: A Magazine of the New Verse
(August 1915).

Sunday
Morning
¹
(1915)

I

            
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

            
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

            
And the green freedom of a cockatoo

            
Upon a rug, mingle to dissipate

            
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

            
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark

            
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,

            
As a calm darkens among water-lights.

            
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings

            
Seem things in some procession of the dead,

            
Winding across wide water, without sound.

            
The day is like wide water, without sound,

            
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet

            
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,

            
Dominion of the blood and sepulcher.

II

            
She hears, upon that water without sound,

            
A voice that cries, “The tomb in Palestine

            
Is not the porch of spirits lingering;

            
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”

            
We live in an old chaos of the sun,

            
Or old dependency of day and night,

            
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,

            
Of that wide water, inescapable.

            
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail

            
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;

            
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;

            
And, in the isolation of the sky,

            
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

            
Ambiguous
undulations as they sink,

            
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

III

            
She says, “I am content when wakened birds,

            
Before they fly, test the reality

            
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;

            
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields

            
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”

            
There is not any haunt of prophecy,

            
Nor any old chimera of the grave,

            
Neither the golden underground, nor isle

            
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,

            
Nor visionary South, nor cloudy palm

            
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured

            
As April's green endures; or will endure

            
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,

            
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped

            
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

IV

            
She says, “But in contentment I still feel

            
The need of some imperishable bliss.”

            
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,

            
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams

            
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves

            
Of sure obliteration on our paths—

            
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths

            
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love

            
Whispered a little out of tenderness—

            
She makes the willow shiver in the sun

            
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze

            
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.

            
She causes boys to bring sweet-smelling pears

            
And plums in ponderous piles. The maidens taste

            
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

V

            
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men

            
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn

            
Their boisterous devotion to the sun—

            
Not as a god, but as a god might be,

            
Naked among them, like a savage source.

            
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,

            
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;

            
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,

            
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,

            
The trees, like seraphim, and echoing hills,

            
That choir among themselves long afterward.

            
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship