"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."

Thursday, January 28, 2010

The house was quiet and the world was calm.


The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Wallace Stevens
(1879 - 1955 / Pennsylvania / United States)

3 comments:

Paul Figaro J said...

why "was"?

sufian stephen aziz said...

we used to be alone in the past then

we are both together later on

we have add little one to our family.

as life goes on, the house "was" empty before and

now full with love and laughter.

Juz said...

Nice :)