Wallace Stevens

From “Pecksniffiana”

BUT not on a shell, she starts,

Archaic, for the sea.

But on the first-found weed

She scuds the glitters,

Noiselessly, like one more wave.

She too is discontent

And would have purple stuff upon her arms,

Tired of the salty harbors,

Eager for the brine and bellowing

Of the high interiors of the sea.

The wind speeds her,

Blowing upon her hands

And watery back.

She touches the clouds, where she goes,

In the circle of her traverse of the sea.

Yet this is meagre play

In the scurry and water-shine,

As her heels foam—

Not as when the goldener nude

Of a later day

Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp,

In an intenser calm,

Scullion of fate,

Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly,

Upon her irretrievable way.