Nuances Of A Theme By Williams

It’s a strange courage
you give me, ancient star:

Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!

I

Shine alone, shine nakedly, shine like bronze
that reflects neither my face nor any inner part
of my being, shine like fire, that mirrors nothing.

II

Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses
you in its own light.
Be not chimera of morning,
Half-man, half-star.
Be not an intelligence,
Like a widow’s bird
Or an old horse.

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—Stevens was a poet transitioning from Romanticism…as well as showing some serious religious impulses (it is suggested that Stevens had a deathbed conversion).   He is also displaying typical characteristics of Modernist metaphysics;  devotion to the thing or object (a kind of aesthetic realism), individualism, and a commitment to enlightenment ideas.

William Carlos Williams’ original poem here.

See Also On This Site:  Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’…From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’