48 quotes
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
Harmonium (1923)
That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.
The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.
Harmonium (1923)
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!
Harmonium (1923)
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks.
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
Harmonium (1923)
Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.
Harmonium (1923)
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.
Harmonium (1923)
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
Harmonium (1923)
The essential gaudiness of poetry.
Harmonium (1923)
Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages,
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.
Harmonium (1923)
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Harmonium (1923)
There are men of the East, he said,
who are the East.
There are men of a province
who are that province.
There are men of a valley
who are that valley.
Harmonium (1923)
The plum survives its poems.
Harmonium (1923)
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.
Harmonium (1923)
That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.
That savage of fire,
That seed,
Have it your way.
The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.
Harmonium (1923)
My candle burned alone in an immense valley.
Beams of the huge night converged upon it,
Until the wind blew.
Then beams of the huge night
Converged upon its image,
Until the wind blew.
Harmonium (1923)
A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned —
A cymbal crashed,
Amid roaring horns.
Harmonium (1923)
Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.
Harmonium (1923)
She walked upon the grass,
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering.
Harmonium (1923)
Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns,
Meekly you keep the mortal rendezvous,
Eliciting the still sustaining pomps
Of speech which are like music so profound
They seem an exaltation without sound.
Harmonium (1923)
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Harmonium (1923)