Wallace Stevens

Here you will find the Poem It Must Give Pleasure of poet Wallace Stevens

It Must Give Pleasure

I
To sing jubilas at exact, accustomed times, 
To be crested and wear the mane of a multitude 
And so, as part, to exult with its great throat, 


To speak of joy and to sing of it, borne on 
The shoulders of joyous men, to feel the heart 
That is the common, the bravest fundament, 


This is a facile exercise. Jerome 
Begat the tubas and the fire-wind strings, 
The golden fingers picking dark-blue air: 


For companies of voices moving there, 
To find of sound the bleakest ancestor, 
To find of light a music issuing 


Whereon it falls in more than sensual mode. 
But the difficultest rigor is forthwith, 
On the image of what we see, to catch from that 


Irrational moment its unreasoning, 
As when the sun comes rising, when the sea 
Clears deeply, when the moon hangs on the wall 


Of heaven-haven. These are not things transformed. 
Yet we are shaken by them as if they were. 
We reason about them with a later reason.