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1
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.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
2
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.
3
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
4
She says, 'I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?'
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
5
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 fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
6
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
7
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feel shall manifest.
8
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, 'The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.'
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
Wallace Stevens
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Read poems about / on: water, green, summer, isolation, mother, beauty, sky, heaven, sun, june, death, april, solitude, autumn, sick, freedom, birth, winter, river, sorrow
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Comments about this poem (Sunday Morning
by
Wallace Stevens
) |
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comments about this poem (Sunday Morning by
Wallace Stevens
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Maureen Fox
(4/10/2009 10:56:00 PM) |
This unsurpassed atheist's hymn is proof that atheism, like religion, can inspire great art.
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Brenda Lennox
(2/29/2008 8:58:00 AM) |
http: //www.avianweb.com/sulphurcrestedcockatoos.html
looks pretty green to me...
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Gary Witt
(1/16/2007 10:58:00 AM) |
Mr. Capozzoli: Damn, you're right! Cockatoos aren't green, they're either white, black or peach. Thank you! After reading your comment I went back to the text. When I did, my initial reaction was that 'green' modified 'freedom, ' and not 'cockatoo.' (And frankly, green seems like an apt color for freedom.) But a few lines down, Stevens talks about 'green wings.' So either he's talking about a parrot (not a cockatoo) , or this living, green cockatoo is some kind of weird, perverse mutant bird, or it is a design on the rug. I stand corrected and support the last of these three possibilities.
So what's 'free' about a design on a rug? Again, I don't pretend to have the final answer here, but it could be that our imaginations are free to create a green cockatoo...something nature hasn't done.
Again, my thanks!
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Nick Capozzoli
(1/14/2007 7:42:00 PM) |
A very great poem indeed. The language is worthy of Shakespeare at his best. What are we to make of 'the green freedom of a cockatoo/upon a rug...? ' I don't believe there are any green cockatoos in nature. There may be rugs with green cockatoos embroidered onto them. I have also seen cockatoo excrement that is greenish in color, and I can imagine that some of this greenish excrement might be deposited 'upon a rug, ' especially if the cockatoo were allowed 'freedom' from its cage.
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Gary Witt
(9/26/2006 10:32:00 AM) |
Well, yes. This is certainly a great and enduring poem. But what makes it great? What causes it to endure? I don't pretend to have the Final Truth here, but let me offer the following as a starting point for further discussion.
IMHO, this particular poem has (at least) three great characteristics: it uses language and imagery carefully to create what I'll call 'density' (i.e., the words and images are packed with meaning): it deals with an important subject (the relationship between God and humankind): and it evokes a panoply of responses, whether intellectually or emotionally. (This last characteristic could be a result of the first-the fact that the words and images are packed with meaning.)
I particularly like to see the point at which this poem starts, where it ends, and how it gets there. It starts on a Sunday morning in room that appears well-appointed, perhaps even opulent. A woman lounges in a peignoir (not a house coat) as her cockatoo wanders across the rug, presumably out of its cage. The 'holy hush of ancient sacrifice' is dissipated by sensuality-the complacencies that surround her. The poem ends with a voice that cries (in the wilderness?) a message concerning 'the tomb in Palestine, ' while 'casual flocks of pigeons make ambiguous undulations.'
On the way from Point A to Point B, almost every line brings a new and powerful image. The first thing I noticed was the birds. Wild birds, birds kept as exotic pets, evoking but not mentioning the concept of Holy Spirit as dove?
The woman questions the nature of divinity. Can God live among us? (Jove? Jesus? The woman's 'dreaming feet' walk across 'wide water.' Does she aspire to divinity?) Can eternal heaven be changeless and still be filled with beauty? (Note here that 'April's green endures.' So while the beauty of an eternal, changeless heaven is questioned, temporal beauty 'endures.')
And in this context, there is a line that Stevens finds important enough to repeat: Death is the mother of beauty.
In the end, 'The tomb in Palestine is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.' If death is the mother of beauty, then what are we to conclude about Jesus' death? Do these lines affirm his resurrection? (Perhaps.) Do they question his divinity? (Again, perhaps.) And what are we to think of this in the context of a natural, chaotic, and quite beautiful world?
I don't believe that Stevens is being ambiguous here. But he certainly is tackling or confronting ambiguity. In the end, perhaps the 'ambiguous undulations' are our own, as we sink downward to darkness on extended wings.
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Marilyn Hochfield
(5/16/2006 7:12:00 PM) |
One of the greatest poems of the 20th century-indeed, of all of English poetry. It will endure as April's green endures.
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Lamont Palmer
(1/28/2006 1:11:00 AM) |
One of the most imaginative poems of the 20th century. Stevens was a master of the music of the mind.
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