Page:Harmonium - Wallace Stevens.djvu/60

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A Nice Shady Home

Crispin as hermit, pure and capable,Dwelt in the land. Perhaps if discontentHad kept him still the pricking realist,Choosing his element from droll confectOf was and is and shall or ought to be,Beyond Bordeaux, beyond Havana, farBeyond carked Yucatan, he might have comeTo colonize his polar planterdomAnd jig his chits upon a cloudy knee.But his emprize to that idea soon sped.Crispin dwelt in the land and dwelling thereSlid from his continent by slow recessTo things within his actual eye, alertTo the difficulty of rebellious thoughtWhen the sky is blue. The blue infected will.It may be that the yarrow in his fieldsSealed pensive purple under its concern.But day by day, now this thing and now thatConfined him, while it cosseted, condoned,Little by little, as if the suzerain soilAbashed him by carouse to humble yetAttach. It seemed haphazard denouement.He first, as realist, admitted thatWhoever hunts a matinal continent

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