Wallace Stevens - The Blue Buildings in the Summer Air lyrics
[Wallace Stevens - The Blue Buildings in the Summer Air lyrics]
Cotton Mather died when I was a boy the books
He read, all day, all night
And all the nights
Had got him nowhere there
Was always the doubt
That made him preach the louder
Long for a church
In which his voice would roll it's cadences
After the sermon
To quiet that mouse in the wall
Over wooden Boston, the sparkling Byzantine
Was everything that Cotton Mather was
And more yet the eminent
Thunder from the mouse
The grinding in the arches of the church
The plaster dropping, even dripping, down
The mouse, the moss, the woman on the shore
If the mouse should swallow the steeple
In it's time
It was a theologian's needle, much
Too sharp for that the shore
The sea, the sun
Their brilliance through the lattices
Crippled
The chandeliers, their morning glazes spread
In opal blobs along the walls and floor
Look down now, Cotton Mather, from the blank
Was heaven where you thought?
It must be there
It must be where you think it is
In the light
On bed-clothes, in an apple on a plate
It is the honey-comb of the seeing man
It is the leaf the bird
Brings back to the boat
Go, mouse, go nibble at Lenin in his tomb
Are you not le plus pur, you ancient one?
Cut summer down to find the honey-comb
You are one go hunt for honey in his hair
You are one of the not-numberable mice
Searching all day, all night
For the honey-comb
He read, all day, all night
And all the nights
Had got him nowhere there
Was always the doubt
That made him preach the louder
Long for a church
In which his voice would roll it's cadences
After the sermon
To quiet that mouse in the wall
Over wooden Boston, the sparkling Byzantine
Was everything that Cotton Mather was
And more yet the eminent
Thunder from the mouse
The grinding in the arches of the church
The plaster dropping, even dripping, down
The mouse, the moss, the woman on the shore
If the mouse should swallow the steeple
In it's time
It was a theologian's needle, much
Too sharp for that the shore
The sea, the sun
Their brilliance through the lattices
Crippled
The chandeliers, their morning glazes spread
In opal blobs along the walls and floor
Look down now, Cotton Mather, from the blank
Was heaven where you thought?
It must be there
It must be where you think it is
In the light
On bed-clothes, in an apple on a plate
It is the honey-comb of the seeing man
It is the leaf the bird
Brings back to the boat
Go, mouse, go nibble at Lenin in his tomb
Are you not le plus pur, you ancient one?
Cut summer down to find the honey-comb
You are one go hunt for honey in his hair
You are one of the not-numberable mice
Searching all day, all night
For the honey-comb