"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

01 June 2015

Access.

Wyeth, Renfield, 1999


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 most 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.
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

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