Page:Harmonium - Wallace Stevens.djvu/62
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And so it came, his cabin shuffled up,His trees were planted, his duenna broughtHer prismy blonde and clapped her in his hands,The curtains flittered and the door was closed.Crispin, magister of a single room,Latched up the night. So deep a sound fell downIt was as if the solitude concealedAnd covered him and his congenial sleep.So deep a sound fell down it grew to beA long soothsaying silence down and down.The crickets beat their tambours in the wind,Marching a motionless march, custodians.
In the presto of the morning, Crispin trod,Each day, still curious, but in a roundLess prickly and much more condign than thatHe once thought necessary. Like Candide,Yeoman and grub, but with a fig in sight,And cream for the fig and silver for the cream,A blonde to tip the silver and to tasteThe rapey gouts. Good star, how that to beAnnealed them in their cabin ribaldries!Yet the quotidian saps philosophersAnd men like Crispin like them in intent,If not in will, to track the knaves of thought.But the quotidian composed as his,Of breakfast ribands, fruits laid in their leaves,The tomtit and the cassia and the rose,Although the rose was not the noble thornOf crinoline spread, but of a pining sweet,Composed of evenings like cracked shutters flungUpon the rumpling bottomness, and nightsIn which those frail custodians watched,Indifferent to the tepid summer cold,
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