Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself
Wallace Stevens 1879 (Reading) – 1955 (Hartford)
At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.
The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.
It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.
That scrawny cry--It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,
Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 24, 2023
- 33 sec read
- 229 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABC XXC XXB XXB XAX XXX |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 584 |
Words | 110 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 |
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"Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/37900/not-ideas-about-the-thing-but-the-thing-itself>.
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