Romance For A Demoiselle Lying In The Grass - Analysis

Introduction

The poem presents a quiet, contemplative voice addressing a demoiselle lying in the grass, registering a restrained, almost ascetic mood that resists flourish. Tone is plain and slightly ironic at first, then becomes intimate and urgent in the final imperative. There is a subtle shift from abstract reflection on sameness to a personal plea for simple, unadorned closeness.

Historical and Authorial Context

Wallace Stevens, an American modernist poet, often balanced philosophical abstraction with sensual observation; his work frequently interrogates imagination versus reality. This short piece fits his interest in how language and perception shape experience, and in choosing plain diction he echoes modernist tendencies toward precise, pared-down expression.

Main Theme: Monotony versus Image

The speaker foregrounds monotony—“It is grass. / It is monotonous.”—and treats it as an aesthetic choice rather than a lack. The poem opposes making “many images” or “nobler notes” to invoking “the monotony of monotonies,” suggesting a preference for sustained, uncomplicated presence over imaginative embellishment. This develops the theme by valuing steadiness as its own kind of depth.

Main Theme: Desire and Restraint

Desire appears obliquely—“your port which conceals / All your characters / And their desires”—implying an inner life hidden beneath an external calm. The closing lines—“Clasp me, / Delicatest machine.”—mix tenderness and restraint, asking for contact without theatrical passion. The poem thus frames erotic longing through modest, controlled language.

Symbols and Vivid Images

Grass functions as a symbol of undifferentiated, natural continuity; its monotony becomes a space for intimacy rather than boredom. The “port” suggests a guarded entrance, a social face that hides multiplicity. The address “delicatest machine” is strikingly ambivalent: machine connotes mechanism or composed personhood, while delicatest emphasizes vulnerability. This compound image compels readers to ask whether the beloved is to be embraced as a crafted, steady object of care or as a fragile living presence.

Closing Insight

Stevens’s poem privileges simple, sustained being over theatrical feeling: it finds ethical and emotional value in monotony and in a controlled, tender physicality. By refusing extravagant imagery, the speaker makes a quiet case for intimacy rooted in steadiness, leaving open whether that steadiness is consoling or containment.