The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage
The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage - context Summary
Published in 1923
Published in Stevens’ first major collection Harmonium (1923), the poem pictures a tentative, "paltry" nude embarking on the sea from a weed rather than a shell. It contrasts this small, restless beginning with an imagined future figure of greater grandeur and calm. The image registers change and aspiration: an early, fragile stage of movement and desire that hints at an inevitable, more majestic artistic or existential development.
Read Complete AnalysesBut not on a shell, she starts, Archaic, for the sea. But on the first-found weed She scuds the glitters, Noiselessly, like one more wave. She too is discontent And would have purple stuff upon her arms, Tired of the salty harbors, Eager for the brine and bellowing Of the high interiors of the sea. The wind speeds her, Blowing upon her hands And watery back. She touches the clouds, where she goes In the circle of her traverse of the sea. Yet this is meagre play In the scurry and water-shine, As her heels foam-- Not as when the goldener nude Of a later day Will go, like the center of sea-green pomp, In an intenser calm, Scullion of fate, Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly, Upon her irretrievable way.
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