Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Of Heaven Considered As a Tomb

Wallace Stevens

WHAT word have you, interpreters, of men

Who in the tomb of heaven walk by night,

The darkened ghosts of our old comedy?

Do they believe they range the gusty cold,

With lanterns borne aloft to light the way,

Freemen of death, about and still about

To find whatever it is they seek? Or does

That burial, pillared up each day as porte

And spiritous passage into nothingness,

Foretell each night the one abysmal night,

When the host shall no more wander, nor the light

Of the steadfast lanterns creep across the dark?

Make hue among the dark comedians,

Halloo them in the topmost distances

For answer from their icy Elysée.