(no subject)
from Mr. Burnshaw and the Statue
[A sculpture of horses in a park is being contemplated.]
II
Come, all celestial paramours,
Whether in-dwelling haughty clouds, frigid
And crisply musical, or holy caverns temple-toned,
Entwine your arms and moving to and fro,
Now like a ballet infantine in awkward steps,
Chant sibilant requiems for this effigy.
Bring down from nowhere nothing's wax-like blooms,
Calling them what you will but loosely-named
In a mortal lullaby, like porcelain.
Then, while the music makes you, make, yourselves,
Long autumn sheens and pittering sounds like sounds
On pattering leaves and suddenly with lights,
Astral and Shelleyan, diffuse new day;
And on this ring of marble horses shed
The rainbow in its glistening serpentines
Made by the sun ascending seventy seas.
Agree: the apple in the orchard, round
And red, will not be redder, rounder then
Than now. No: nor the ploughman in his bed
Be free to sleep there sounder, for the plough
And the dew and the ploughman still will best be one.
But this gawky plaster will not be here.
from Stevens' letter to Hi Simons, August 27, 1940
2. Forget about Mr. Burnshaw. The paramours are all the things in our nature that are celestial. In their very movements they are of the future (ballet infantine). They are compelled by desire (music makes you) in the commingling of those two immense reflections (autumn sheens: the past, and the glistening serpentines: the future), even in their requiem for the effete, etc. to diffuse the new day. The music makes them. The astral and Shelleyan lights are not going to alter the structure of nature. Apples will always be apples, and whoever is a ploughman hereafter will be what the ploughman has always been. For all that, the astral and the Shelleyan will have transformed the world.
[A sculpture of horses in a park is being contemplated.]
II
Come, all celestial paramours,
Whether in-dwelling haughty clouds, frigid
And crisply musical, or holy caverns temple-toned,
Entwine your arms and moving to and fro,
Now like a ballet infantine in awkward steps,
Chant sibilant requiems for this effigy.
Bring down from nowhere nothing's wax-like blooms,
Calling them what you will but loosely-named
In a mortal lullaby, like porcelain.
Then, while the music makes you, make, yourselves,
Long autumn sheens and pittering sounds like sounds
On pattering leaves and suddenly with lights,
Astral and Shelleyan, diffuse new day;
And on this ring of marble horses shed
The rainbow in its glistening serpentines
Made by the sun ascending seventy seas.
Agree: the apple in the orchard, round
And red, will not be redder, rounder then
Than now. No: nor the ploughman in his bed
Be free to sleep there sounder, for the plough
And the dew and the ploughman still will best be one.
But this gawky plaster will not be here.
from Stevens' letter to Hi Simons, August 27, 1940
2. Forget about Mr. Burnshaw. The paramours are all the things in our nature that are celestial. In their very movements they are of the future (ballet infantine). They are compelled by desire (music makes you) in the commingling of those two immense reflections (autumn sheens: the past, and the glistening serpentines: the future), even in their requiem for the effete, etc. to diffuse the new day. The music makes them. The astral and Shelleyan lights are not going to alter the structure of nature. Apples will always be apples, and whoever is a ploughman hereafter will be what the ploughman has always been. For all that, the astral and the Shelleyan will have transformed the world.