Page:Harmonium - Wallace Stevens.djvu/66

This page has been validated.
In couch, four more personæ, intimateAs buffo, yet divers, four mirrors blueThat should be silver, four accustomed seedsHinting incredible hues, four self-same lightsThat spread chromatics in hilarious dark,Four questioners and four sure answerers.
Crispin concocted doctrine from the rout.The world, a turnip once so readily plucked,Sacked up and carried overseas, daubed outOf its ancient purple, pruned to the fertile main,And sown again by the stiffest realist,Came reproduced in purple, family font,The same insoluble lump. The fatalistStepped in and dropped the chuckling down his craw,Without grace or grumble. Score this anecdoteInvented for its pith, not doctrinalIn form though in design, as Crispin willed,Disguised pronunciamento, summary,Autumn's compendium, strident in itselfBut muted, mused, and perfectly revolvedIn those portentous accents, syllables,And sounds of music coming to accordUpon his law, like their inherent sphere,Seraphic proclamations of the pureDelivered with a deluging onwardness.Or if the music sticks, if the anecdoteIs false, if Crispin is a profitlessPhilosopher, beginning with green brag,Concluding fadedly, if as a manProne to distemper he abates in taste,Fickle and fumbling, variable, obscure,Glozing his life with after-shining flicks,Illuminating, from a fancy gorged

68