The house was quiet and the world was calm. <br />The reader became the book; and summer night <br /> <br />Was like the conscious being of the book. <br />The house was quiet and the world was calm. <br /> <br />The words were spoken as if there was no book, <br />Except that the reader leaned above the page, <br /> <br />Wanted to lean, wanted much to be <br />The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom <br /> <br />The summer night is like a perfection of thought. <br />The house was quiet because it had to be. <br /> <br />The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: <br />The access of perfection to the page. <br /> <br />And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world, <br />In which there is no other meaning, itself <br /> <br />Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself <br />Is the reader leaning late and reading there.<br /><br />Wallace Stevens<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-house-was-quiet-and-the-world-was-calm/
