Peter Quince at the Clavier
Peter Quince at the Clavier
Original Text
Harmonium (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, [September 7], 1923): 132-34. York University Library Special Collections 734
2Make music, so the self-same sounds
3On my spirit make a music, too.
4Music is feeling, then, not sound;
5And thus it is that what I feel,
6Here in this room, desiring you,
7Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
8Is music. It is like the strain
10Of a green evening, clear and warm,
11She bathed in her still garden, while
12The red-eyed elders, watching, felt
13The basses of their beings throb
14In witching chords, and their thin blood
II
16In the green water, clear and warm,17Susanna lay.
18She searched
19The touch of springs,
20And found
21Concealed imaginings.
22She sighed,
23For so much melody.
24Upon the bank, she stood
25In the cool
26Of spent emotions.
27She felt, among the leaves,
28The dew
29Of old devotions.
30She walked upon the grass,
31Still quavering.
32The winds were like her maids,
33On timid feet,
34Fetching her woven scarves,
35Yet wavering.
36A breath upon her hand
37Muted the night.
38She turned --
39A cymbal crashed,
40Amid roaring horns.
43They wondered why Susanna cried
44Against the elders by her side;
45And as they whispered, the refrain
46Was like a willow swept by rain.
47Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame
48Revealed Susanna and her shame.
49And then, the simpering Byzantines
50Fled, with a noise like tambourines.
IV
51Beauty is momentary in the mind --52The fitful tracing of a portal;
53But in the flesh it is immortal.
54The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
55So evenings die, in their green going,
56A wave, interminably flowing.
57So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
60Celebration of a maiden's choral.
61Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
62Of those white elders; but, escaping,
63Left only Death's ironic scraping.
64Now, in its immortality, it plays
65On the clear viol of her memory,
66And makes a constant sacrament of praise.
Notes
1] Peter Quince, one of the bumbling rustics in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream who put on a well-meant but unintentionally funny play of the tragic love of Pyramus and Thisbe for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. Stevens recognized this in a late letter (Letters, 786). Back to Line
9] Susanna: as told in the apocryphal book of Daniel (chapter 13), this virtuous wife of Joakim in Babylon rejected the sexual demands of two old men of the tribe, who then calumniated her in revenge. Daniel discovered they were lying and had them executed. Back to Line
15] pizzicati: the sound of plucked strings.
Hosanna: "pray, save us" (Greek). Back to Line
Hosanna: "pray, save us" (Greek). Back to Line
41] tambourines: thin handheld drum with jingling metal trickets on the edges. Back to Line
42] Byzantines: servants originating in the post-Roman Byzantine empire (an anachronism). Back to Line
58] cowl: hood (as of a monk). Back to Line
59] auroral: dawn. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1915
Publication Notes
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915 and Year Book of American Poetry, ed. William Stanley Braithwaite (New York: Gomme and Marshall, 1915): 15-17
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 2000.