Explore "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage" by Wallace Stevens on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
But not on a shell, she starts, / Archaic, for the sea. / But on the first-found weed / She scuds the glitters, / Noiselessly, like one more wave.
She too is discontent / And would have purple stuff upon her arms, / Tired of the salty harbors, / Eager for the brine and bellowing / Of the high interiors of the sea.
The wind speeds her, / Blowing upon her hands / And watery back. / She touches the clouds, where she goes / In the circle of her traverse of the sea.
Yet this is meagre play / In the scurry and water-shine, / As her heels foam -- / Not as when the goldener nude / Of a later day
Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp, / In an intenser calm, / Scullion of fate, / Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly, / Upon her irretrievable way.