...of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.' We live in an old chaos of the sun, 5 Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude,...the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; 10 Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks...

...on "our old dependency of day and night," on the power of the knowledge that the world is out there: Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle...spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness . . . It amazes me, the way Wordsworth has come to it: From nature largely he receives; nor so Is satisfied,...

...have bears, buffaloes, the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, wild asters and Black-eyed Susans, Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle...spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness . . .2 How can our poetry be expected to be like that of Wordsworth or Tennyson? Second possibility:...

...God immediately with a description of its consequences for a world recognized finally as flux, chaos: We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency...unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Nietzsche writes in The Will to Power: "If [man] had required a God in the past, he now delights in...

...we like, Or as small as we like, or both great and small. THE SUBJECT OF CONTEXT / 23 And Stevens: We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency...day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored free. . . . ("Sunday Morning") In these instances "or" not only does not require but positively precludes...

...is that our only life is the life we know, the planet on which we live, an "old chaos of the sun": We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency...the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as...

...Stevens celebrates our natural world with a freshness that is breathtaking, as in "Sunday Morning": Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle...spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness. His work studies the seasons with exactness and love, finding metaphors everywhere. He was a poet of...

...sun's day, the source of light and life. His faith was the faith of men who are mortal and perish: "We live in an old chaos of the sun, / Or old dependency...and night, / Or island solitude, unsponsored, free." Divinity, he said, must live within oneself, in an awareness of the changing seasons, "passions of...

...(rather, obstructing) our understanding. The same can be said of 378 Stevens at his most splendid: We live in an old chaos of the sun Or old dependency of day and night. To twist and reverse TS Eliot's remark on Dryden, this is poetry that suggests enormously but states...

...Mather (Puritan 157). Stevens ends "Sunday Morning" with this promise: Deer walk on our mountains, and quail whistle About us their spontaneous cries, Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness Retaining the Puritan sense of boundary, of the encircling "wilderness," Stevens points with pride...