Nuances of a Theme by Williams

"Nuances of a Theme by Williams" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.

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.

The italicized first lines make up a poem, "El Hombre", by Stevens' modernist contemporary William Carlos Williams. The poem was first published in Little Review 5 (1918).^[1]

References

1. Cook, Eleanor (2009). A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens. Princeton University Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-691-14108-4.