The Depths of Thought

This poem seems to capture the one to one experience of the reader and the writer; it is as if the poet or narrator speaks directly to the reader personally. In these days of seemingly continual sensory bombardment, it's such a relief to turn to the printed page and Wallace Stevens captures this experience so perfectly.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night.


Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned over the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be. 

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself 
Is the reader leaning late and reading there. 
(The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm~ Wallace Stevens)