Gray Room
Gray Room - context Summary
Published in 1917
"Gray Room" appears in Wallace Stevens's 1917 collection Harmonium. The short lyric fixes on a woman in a muted interior, cataloguing small, vivid objects and gestures — a green fan, green beads, a fallen leaf — against a gray room. The attentive, descriptive eye contrasts external calm with an acknowledged, intense inner pulse; the closing line names the speaker's certainty about the woman’s rapid heartbeat.
Read Complete AnalysesAlthough you sit in a room that is gray, Except for the silver Of the straw-paper, And pick At your pale white gown; Or lift one of the green beads Of your necklace, To let it fall; Or gaze at your green fan Printed with the red branches of a red willow; Or, with one finger, Move the leaf in the bowl-- The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia Beside you... What is all this? I know how furiously your heart is beating.
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