Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion

By Wallace Stevens 1879–1955 Wallace Stevens

You dweller in the dark cabin,

To whom the watermelon is always purple,

Whose garden is wind and moon,

Of the two dreams, night and day,

What lover, what dreamer, would choose

The one obscured by sleep?

Here is the plantain by your door

And the best cock of red feather

That crew before the clocks.

A feme may come, leaf-green,

Whose coming may give revel

Beyond revelries of sleep,

Yes, and the blackbird spread its tail,

So that the sun may speckle,

While it creaks hail.

You dweller in the dark cabin,

Rise, since rising will not waken,

And hail, cry hail, cry hail.

Source: The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1982)

Biography

Wallace Stevens is one of America's most respected poets. He was a master stylist, employing an extraordinary vocabulary and a rigorous precision in crafting his poems. But he was also a philosopher of aesthetics, vigorously exploring the notion of poetry as the supreme fusion of the creative imagination and objective reality. Because of the extreme technical and thematic complexity of his work, Stevens was sometimes considered . . .

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