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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Wallace Stevens

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Homunculus et la Belle Etoile

Wallace Stevens

From “Pecksniffiana”

IN the sea, Biscayne, there prinks

The young emerald, evening star—

Good light for drunkards, poets, widows,

And ladies soon to be married.

By this light the salty fishes

Arch in the sea like tree-branches,

Going in many directions

Up and down.

This light conducts

The thoughts of drunkards, the feelings

Of widows and trembling ladies,

The movements of fishes.

How pleasant an existence it is

That this emerald charms philosophers,

Until they become thoughtlessly willing

To bathe their hearts in later moonlight,

Knowing that they can bring back thought

In the night that is still to be silent,

Reflecting this thing and that,

Before they sleep.

It is better that, as scholars,

They should think hard in the dark cuffs

Of voluminous cloaks,

And shave their heads and bodies.

It might well be that their mistress

Is no gaunt fugitive phantom.

She might, after all, be a wanton,

Abundantly beautiful, eager.

Fecund,

From whose being by starlight, on sea-coast,

The innermost good of their seeking

Might come in the simplest of speech.

It is a good light, then, for those

That know the ultimate Plato,

Tranquillizing with this jewel

The torments of confusion.