Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion

Poem by Wallace Stevens

"Hymn From A Watermelon Pavilion" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain.

Hymn From A Watermelon Pavilion

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.

Poetic narrative

The dweller in the dark cabin may be understood to be the specifically poetical dreamer, like the old sailor in "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock". Stevens enjoins him not to sleep in his dream, but rather to explore its riches. If the sleeper rises to do so, he will not waken, for he is still in the dream. The poem should be compared to "Anecdote of Canna". (In another vein, it can also be compared to "Of Heaven Considered As a Tomb", in which the poet exhorts "interpreters" to "Make hue among the dark comedians" and "Halloo them in the topmost distances" as he in this poem exhorts his addressee, a "dweller in a dark cabin", to "hail, cry hail, cry hail".)

Interpretation

Doggett interprets the poem differently, without imputing a dream world explored by the poet. The dweller is the self, and the dark cabin is the body. The dweller's "sense of reality is obscured as though in a dream, but beside cabin is the vivid actual plantain of green reality and the sun".

Buttel comments on the poem's title. "How appropriate", he writes, "for Stevens' theme to infuse, by such imaginative conjoinings , the earthy, vigorous reality of America with the grace of French words. By such means he was able to be richly aesthetic without sacrificing vitality".

Notes

Buttel, p. 206.
Doggett, p. 374.
Buttel, pp. 77-8.

References

Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. Princeton University Press, 1967.
Doggett, Frank. "The Poet of Earth: Wallace Stevens". In College English (March 1961), Volume 22, Number 6.

v t e Harmonium by Wallace Stevens
"Earthy Anecdote" "Invective Against Swans" "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage" "The Plot Against the Giant" "Infanta Marina" "Domination of Black" "The Snow Man" "The Ordinary Women" "The Load Of Sugar-Cane" "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" "Nuances of a Theme by Williams" "Metaphors of a Magnifico" "Ploughing on Sunday" "Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges" "Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores" "Fabliau of Florida" "Doctor of Geneva" "Homunculus et la Belle Etoile" "The Comedian as the Letter C" "From the Misery of Don Joost" "O Florida, Venereal Soil" "Last Looks at the Lilacs" "The Worms at Heaven's Gate" "The Jack-Rabbit" "Valley Candle" "Anecdote of Men by the Thousand" "The Apostrophe to Vincentine" "Floral Decorations for Bananas" "Anecdote of Canna" "On the Manner of Addressing Clouds" "Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb " "Of the Surface of Things" "Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks" "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman" "The Place of the Solitaires" "The Weeping Burgher" "The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician" "Banal Sojourn" "Depression Before Spring" "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" "The Cuban Doctor" "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon" "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" "Sunday Morning" "The Virgin Carrying a Lantern" "Stars at Tallapoosa" "Explanation" "Six Significant Landscapes" "Bantam in Pine-Woods" "Anecdote of the Jar" "Palace of the Babies" "Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs" "Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow" "Cortège for Rosenbloom" "Tattoo" "The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws" "Life Is Motion" "The Wind Shifts" "Colloquy with a Polish Aunt" "Gubbinal" "Two Figures in Dense Violet Night" "Theory" "To the One of Fictive Music" "Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion" "Peter Quince at the Clavier" "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" "Nomad Exquisite" "The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad" "The Death of a Soldier" "Negation" "The Surprises of the Superhuman" "Sea Surface Full of Clouds" "The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade" "Lunar Paraphrase" "Anatomy of Monotony" "The Public Square" "Indian River" "Tea"

Harmonium by Wallace Stevens

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