early as 1913, it was not until ten years later that Stevens' first volume, Harmonium (1923), appeared.

The most casual reading of this volume discloses the fact that Stevens is a stylist of unusual delicacy. Even the least sympathetic reader must be struck by the poet's hypersensitive and ingenious imagination. It is a curiously ambiguous world which Stevens paints: a world of merging half-lights, of finicking shadows, of disembodied emotions. Even this last phrase is an exaggeration, for emotion itself seems absent from the most brightly colored of the poet's designs. As Llewellyn Powys has written, "Mr. Stevens' poetry is beyond good and evil, beyond hope and despair, beyond thought of any kind, one might almost say."

Considered as a painter, Stevens is one of the most original impressionists of the times. He is fond of little blocks of sheer color, verbal mosaics in which syllables are used as pigments. Little related to any human struggle, the content of Harmonium progresses toward a sort of "absolute" poetry which, depending on tone and color rather than on passion, aims to flower in an air of pure æstheticism. His very titles-which deliberately add to the reader's confusion by having little or no connection with most of the poems-betray this quality: "Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion," "The Emperor of Ice Cream," "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage," "Frogs Eat Butterflies, Snakes Eat Frogs, Hogs Eat Snakes, Men Eat Hogs." Such poems have much for the eye, something for the ear but little indeed for that central hunger which is at the heart of all the senses.

But, although Stevens displays an almost childish love of alliteration and assonance, he strikes out many vivid phrases. It is true that what Stevens spreads before us is often less like a canvas and more like a color palette. But his exotically splashed lines are alert with witty precisions. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" has a delicacy of design which suggests the Chinese; "Peter Quince at the Clavier" and "To the One of Fictive Music" (Stevens' most obviously musical moment) reveal an elegance which places "this auditor of insects, this lutanist of fleas" as one who has perfected a kind of poetry which is, for all its limitations, a strangely fastidious and hermetic art.

PETER QUINCE AT THE CLAVIER 1

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.

1 Compare the poem on the same theme on page 259.

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,

And 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.

TO THE ONE OF FICTIVE MUSIC

Sister and mother and diviner love,

And of the sisterhood of the living dead

Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom,
And of the fragrant mothers the most dear
And queen, and of diviner love the day

And flame and summer and sweet fire, no thread
Of cloudy silver sprinkles in your gown
Its venom of renown, and on your head
No crown is simpler than the simple hair.

Now, of the music summoned by the birth
That separates us from the wind and sea,
Yet leaves us in them, until earth becomes,

By being so much of the things we are,
Gross effigy and simulacrum, none
Gives motion to perfection more serene
Than yours, out of our imperfections wrought,
Most rare, or ever of more kindred air
In the laborious weaving that you wear.

For so retentive of themselves are men
That music is intensest which proclaims.

The near, the clear, and vaunts the clearest bloom,
And of all vigils musing the obscure,

That apprehends the most which sees and names,
As in your name, an image that is sure,
Among the arrant spices of the sun,

O bough and bush and scented vine, in whom
We give ourselves our likest issuance.

Yet not too like, yet not so like to be

Too near, too clear, saving a little to endow

Our feigning with the strange unlike, whence springs
The difference that heavenly pity brings.

For this, musician, in your girdle fixed

Bear other perfumes. On your pale head wear
A band entwining, set with fatal stones.
Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:
The imagination that we spurned and crave.

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, September 17, 1883, the son of Raquel Ellen Rose Hoheb, born at Mayaguez, Porto Rico, and William George Williams, born in Birmingham, England. Williams was educated at Horace Mann High School, New York, at Geneva, Switzerland, and graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1906. After studying abroad, he returned in 1910 and took up his practise in Rutherford where he has lived ever since.