The plaster dropping, even dripping, down,
The mouse, the moss, the woman on the shore . . .
III
If the mouse should swallow the steeple, in its time . . .
It was a theologian's needle, much
Too sharp for that. The shore, the sea, the sun,
Their brilliance through the lattices, crippled
The chandeliers, their morning glazes spread
In opal blobs along the walls and floor.
IV
Look down now, Cotton Mather, from the blank.
Was heaven where you thought? It must be there.
It must be where you think it is, in the light
On bed-clothes, in an apple on a plate.
It is the honey-comb of the seeing man.
It is the leaf the bird brings back to the boat.
An example of Stevens’s idea that man should worship reality and nature rather than something beyond our own existence.
The Blue Buildings in the Summer Air