Poems by Wallace Stevens

In English – En Français – На Русском Языке – Bilingual

American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Wallace Stevens – Poems by Wallace Stevens

Collections:

In English

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

A

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, … Continue Reading …

A Nice Shady Home
Crispin as hermit, pure and capable,
Dwelt in the land. Perhaps if discontent
Had kept him still the pricking realist, … Continue Reading …

And Daughters with Curls
Portentous enunciation, syllable
To blessed syllable affined, and sound
Bubbling felicity in cantilene, … Continue Reading …

Anecdote of Canna
Huge are the canna in the dreams of
X, the mighty thought, the mighty man.
They fill the terrace of his capitol. … Continue Reading …

Anecdote of Men by the Thousand
The soul, he said, is composed
Of the external world.
There are men of the East, he said, … Continue Reading …

Anecdote of the Jar
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness … Continue Reading …

Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks
In the moonlight
I met Berserk,
In the moonlight … Continue Reading …

Another Weeping Woman
Pour the unhappiness out
From your too bitter heart,
Which grieving will not sweeten. … Continue Reading …

Approaching Carolina
The book of moonlight is not written yet
Nor half begun, but, when it is, leave room
For Crispin, fagot in the lunar fire, … Continue Reading …

Architecture
What manner of building shall we build?
Let us design a chastel de chasteté.
De pensée. . . . … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

B

Banal Sojourn
Two wooden tubs of blue hydrangeas stand at the foot of the stone steps.
The sky is a blue gum streaked with rose. The trees are black. … Continue Reading …

Bantams in Pine-Woods
chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt! … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

C

Colloquy with a Polish Aunt
How is it that my saints from Voragine,
In their embroidered slippers, touch your spleen? … Continue Reading …

Concerning the Thunderstorms of Yucatan
In Yucatan, the Maya sonneteers
Of the Caribbean amphitheatre,
In spite of hawk and falcon, green toucan … Continue Reading …

Cortège for Rosenbloom
Now, wry Rosenbloom is dead
And his finical carriers tread,
On a hundred legs, the tread … Continue Reading …

Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges
Ursula, in a garden, found
A bed of radishes.
She kneeled upon the ground … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

D

Depression before Spring
The cock crows
But no queen rises.
The hair of my blonde … Continue Reading …

Disillusionment of Ten O’clock
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green, … Continue Reading …

Domination of Black
At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves, … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

E

Earthy Anecdote
Every time the bucks went clattering
Over Oklahoma
A firecat bristled in the way. … Continue Reading …

Explanation
Ach, Mutter,
This old, black dress,
I have been embroidering … Continue Reading …

Exposition of the Contents of a Cab
Victoria Clementina, negress,
Took seven white dogs
To ride in a cab. … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

F

Fabliau of Florida
Barque of phosphor
On the palmy beach,
Move outward into heaven, … Continue Reading …

Floral Decorations for Bananas
Well, nuncle, this plainly won’t do.
These insolent, linear peels
And sullen, hurricane shapes … Continue Reading …

Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs
It is true that the rivers went nosing like swine,
Tugging at banks, until they seemed
Bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs, … Continue Reading …

From the Misery of Don Joost
I have finished my combat with the sun;
And my body, the old animal,
Knows nothing more. … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

G

Gubbinal
That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.… Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

H

Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores
I say now, Fernando, that on that day
The mind roamed as a moth roams,
Among the blooms beyond the open sand; … Continue Reading …

Homunculus et la Belle Etoile
In the sea, Biscayne, there prinks
The young emerald, evening star,
Good light for drunkards, poets, widows, … Continue Reading …

Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion
You dweller in the dark cabin,
To whom the watermelon is always purple,
Whose garden is wind and moon, … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

I – J

In the Carolinas
The lilacs wither in the Carolinas.
Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins.
Already the new-born children interpret love … Continue Reading …

Infanta Marina
Her terrace was the sand
And the palms and the twilight.
She made of the motions of her wrist … Continue Reading …

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 … Continue Reading …

Jasmine’s Beautiful Thoughts underneath the Willow
My titillations have no foot-notes
And their memorials are the phrases
Of idiosyncratic music. … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

K

L

Last Looks at the Lilacs
To what good, in the alleys of the lilacs,
O caliper, do you scratch your buttocks
And tell the divine ingénue, your companion, … Continue Reading …

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, … Continue Reading …

Life is Motion
In Oklahoma,
Bonnie and Josie,
Dressed in calico, … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

M

Metaphors of a Magnifico
Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

N

Negation
Hi! The creator too is blind,
Struggling toward his harmonious whole,
Rejecting intermediate parts, … Continue Reading …

Nomad Exquisite
As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm … Continue Reading …

Nuances of a Theme by Williams
It’s a strange courage
you give me, ancient star:
Shine alone in the sunrise … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

O

O, Florida, Venereal Soil
A few things for themselves,
Convolvulus and coral,
Buzzards and live-moss, … Continue Reading …

Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb
What word have you, interpreters, of men
Who in the tomb of heaven walk by night,
The darkened ghosts of our old comedy? … Continue Reading …

Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds
Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns,
Meekly you keep the mortal rendezvous,
Eliciting the still sustaining pomps … Continue Reading …

Of the Surface of Things
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud. … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

P

Palace of the Babies
The disbeliever walked the moonlit place,
Outside of gates of hammered serafin,
Observing the moon-blotches on the walls. … Continue Reading …

Peter Quince at the Clavier
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too. … Continue Reading …

Ploughing on Sunday
The white cock’s tail
Tosses in the wind.
The turkey-cock’s tail … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

Q

R

S

Six Significant Landscapes
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China. … Continue Reading …

Stars at Tallapoosa
The lines are straight and swift between the stars.
The night is not the cradle that they cry,
The criers, undulating the deep-oceaned phrase. … Continue Reading …

Sunday Morning
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

T

Tattoo
The light is like a spider.
It crawls over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow. … Continue Reading …

Tea
When the elephant’s-ear in the park
Shrivelled in frost,
And the leaves on the paths … Continue Reading …

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself. … Continue Reading …

The Apostrophe to Vincentine
I figured you as nude between
Monotonous earth and dark blue sky.
It made you seem so small and lean … Continue Reading …

The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws
Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails. … Continue Reading …

The Comedian as the Letter C
The World without Imagination
Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil,
The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates
Of snails, musician of pears, principium
Concerning the Thunderstorms of Yucatan
In Yucatan, the Maya sonneteers
Of the Caribbean amphitheatre,
In spite of hawk and falcon, green toucan
Approaching Carolina
The book of moonlight is not written yet
Nor half begun, but, when it is, leave room
For Crispin, fagot in the lunar fire,
The Idea of a Colony
Nota: his soil is man’s intelligence.
That’s better. That’s worth crossing seas to find.
Crispin in one laconic phrase laid bare
A Nice Shady Home
Crispin as hermit, pure and capable,
Dwelt in the land. Perhaps if discontent
Had kept him still the pricking realist,
And Daughters with Curls
Portentous enunciation, syllable
To blessed syllable affined, and sound
Bubbling felicity in cantilene,

The Cuban Doctor
I went to Egypt to escape
The Indian, but the Indian struck
Out of his cloud and from his sky. … Continue Reading …

The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician
It comes about that the drifting of these curtains
Is full of long motions; as the ponderous
Deflations of distance; or as clouds … Continue Reading …

The Doctor of Geneva
The doctor of Geneva stamped the sand
That lay impounding the Pacific swell,
Patted his stove-pipe hat and tugged his shawl. … Continue Reading …

The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. … Continue Reading …

The Idea of a Colony
Nota: his soil is man’s intelligence.
That’s better. That’s worth crossing seas to find.
Crispin in one laconic phrase laid bare … Continue Reading …

The Jack Rabbit
In the morning,
The jack-rabbit sang to the Arkansaw.
He carolled in caracoles … Continue Reading …

The Load of Sugar-Cane
The going of the glade-boat
Is like water flowing;
Like water flowing … Continue Reading …

The Ordinary Women
Then from their poverty they rose,
From dry catarrhs, and to guitars
They flitted … Continue Reading …

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 … Continue Reading …

The Place of the Solitaires
Let the place of the solitaires
Be a place of perpetual undulation.
Whether it be in mid-sea … Continue Reading …

The Plot against the Giant
When this yokel comes maundering,
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him, … Continue Reading …

The Silver Plough-Boy
A black figure dances in a black field.
It seizes a sheet, from the ground, from a bush, as if spread there by some wash-woman for the night. … Continue Reading …

The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; … Continue Reading …

The Virgin Carrying a Lantern
There are no bears among the roses,
Only a negress who supposes
Things false and wrong … Continue Reading …

The Weeping Burgher
It is with a strange malice
That I distort the world.
Ah! that ill humors … Continue Reading …

The Wind Shifts
This is how the wind shifts
:Like the thoughts of an old human,
Who still thinks eagerly … Continue Reading …

The World without Imagination
Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil,
The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates
Of snails, musician of pears, principium … Continue Reading …

The Worms at Heaven’s Gate
Out of the tomb, we bring Badroulbadour,
Within our bellies, we her chariot.
Here is an eye. And here are, one by one, … Continue Reading …

Theory
I am what is around me.
Women understand this.
One is not duchess … Continue Reading …

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird. … Continue Reading …

To the One of Fictive Music
Sister and mother and diviner love,
And of the sisterhood of the living dead
Moat near, moat clear, and of the dearest bloom, … Continue Reading …

To the Roaring Wind
What syllable are you seeking,
Vocalissimus, … Continue Reading …

Two Figures in Dense Violet Night
I had as lief be embraced by the porter at the hotel
As to set no more from the moonlight
Than your moist hand. … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

U

V

Valley Candle
My candle burned alone in an immense valley.
Beams of the huge night converged upon it, … Continue Reading …

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

W – X – Y – Z

Bilingual

American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Wallace Stevens – Poems by Wallace Stevens