Wallace Stevens - Of Ideal Time and Choice lyrics
[Wallace Stevens - Of Ideal Time and Choice lyrics]
Since thirty mornings are required to make
A day of which we say, this is the day
That we desired, a day of blank, blue wheels
Involving the four corners of the sky
Lapised and lacqued and freely emeraldine
In the space it fills, the silent motioner
There, of clear, revolving crystalline
Since thirty summers are needed for a year
And thirty years, in the galaxies of birth
Are time for counting and remembering
And fill the earth with
Young men centuries old
And old men, who have chosen, and are cold
Because what they have chosen is their choice
No more and because they lack
The will to tell
A matin gold from gold of Hesperus
The dot, the pale pole of resemblances
Experienced yet not well seen, of how
Much choosing is the final choice made up
And who shall speak it
What child or wanderer
Or woman weeping in a room or man
The last man given for epitome
Upon whose lips the dissertation sounds
And in what place, what exultant terminal
And at what time both of the year and day
And what heroic nature of what text
Shall be the celebration in the words
Of that oration, the happiest sense in which
A world agrees, thought's compromise
Resolved
At last, the center of resemblance, found
Under the bones of time's philosophers?
The orator will say that we ourselves
Stand at the center of ideal time
The inhuman making choice of a human self
A day of which we say, this is the day
That we desired, a day of blank, blue wheels
Involving the four corners of the sky
Lapised and lacqued and freely emeraldine
In the space it fills, the silent motioner
There, of clear, revolving crystalline
Since thirty summers are needed for a year
And thirty years, in the galaxies of birth
Are time for counting and remembering
And fill the earth with
Young men centuries old
And old men, who have chosen, and are cold
Because what they have chosen is their choice
No more and because they lack
The will to tell
A matin gold from gold of Hesperus
The dot, the pale pole of resemblances
Experienced yet not well seen, of how
Much choosing is the final choice made up
And who shall speak it
What child or wanderer
Or woman weeping in a room or man
The last man given for epitome
Upon whose lips the dissertation sounds
And in what place, what exultant terminal
And at what time both of the year and day
And what heroic nature of what text
Shall be the celebration in the words
Of that oration, the happiest sense in which
A world agrees, thought's compromise
Resolved
At last, the center of resemblance, found
Under the bones of time's philosophers?
The orator will say that we ourselves
Stand at the center of ideal time
The inhuman making choice of a human self