The Worms at Heaven's Gate is a poem from Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

' first book of poetry, Harmonium

Harmonium (poetry collection)

Harmonium is a book of poetry by U.S. poet Wallace Stevens. His first book, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. He was in middle age at that time, forty-four years old. The collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred...

(1923). It was first published in 1916 and is therefore in the public domain.

The Worms at Heaven's Gate Out of the tomb, we bring Badroulbadour, Within our bellies, we her chariot. Here is an eye. And here are, one by one, The lashes of that eye and its white lid. Here is the cheek on which that lid declined, And, finger after finger, here, the hand, The genius of that cheek. Here are the lips, The bundle of the body and the feet. . . . . . . . . . . . Out of the tomb we bring Badroulbadour.

The title is probably an allusion

Allusion

An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...

 to William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's Sonnet 29

Sonnet 29

Sonnet 29 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. This is one of his more ambiguous sonnets: one does not know who the speaker is referring to or if the word "love" in this sonnet refers to a romantic love or a platonic love.- Structure of Sonnet 29...

 ("When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes...") wherein the words "Hymn

Hymn

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...

s at Heaven's Gate" appear. Badroulbadour

Badroulbadour

Badroulbadour is a princess from the far east whom Aladdin married in The Story of Aladdin; or, the Wonderful Lamp...

 was a princess married to Aladdin

Aladdin

Aladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection by Antoine Galland ....

 in a fairytale from One Thousand and One Nights.

Robert Buttel sees the poem as a specimen of Stevens' "grotesque strain" and wryly observes that "it would be difficult to find a more unique funeral procession in literature." He credits William Carlos Williams for improving the line "Within our bellies, we her chariot." from the original "Within our bellies, as a chariot."

The overall impression is at once macabre and archly humorous. Thoughts of death and decay are secondary to the sound of 'Badroulbadour', the verb 'decline', and the poem's syntactic architecture. But in essence the poem conveys a sense of the transient nature of beauty. For another perspective on this transience see "Peter Quince at the Clavier

Peter Quince at the Clavier

"Peter Quince at the Clavier" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.The poem was first published in 1915 in the "little magazine" Others: A Magazine of the New Verse , edited by Alfred Kreymborg....

".

The poem may be compared to "Anecdote of Canna

Anecdote of Canna

"Anecdote of Canna" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium .In the poem's legerdemain the cryptic middle stanza conceals the sleight of hand. Poor X wakes in his sleep and consequently his eye clings to the canna forever. The cleverness of the poem links it to "The Worms...

", which describes a unique terrace stroll, and to "Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb

Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb

"Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published in 1921, so it is in the public domain....

", which speculates on the other side of death. Attending to the blank-verse syntax, Buttel compares the poem to Infanta Marina

Infanta Marina

Infanta Marina is a poem in Wallace Stevens' Harmonium about a seaside princess. Helen Vendler presents the poem as a "double scherzo" on 'her' in the possessive sense and on 'of' in its partitive and possessive sense....

for the delicacy of its rhythm, to which it adds the insistent rhythms of a funeral procession. (See also Cortege for Rosenbloom

Cortège for Rosenbloom

Cortege for Rosenbloom is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1921 and is therefore in the public domain in the United States and similar jurisdictions....

.)

Out of the tomb, we bring Badroulbadour;

Then in lines three and four,

Here is an eye. And here are, one by one,

The lashes of that eye and its white lid.

Buttel continues:

[T]he reversed initial foot and the following caesura help draw specific attention to the eye; the following three iambic feet maintain the pace of the procession; and the spondees on `that eye' and `white lid' substantiate the reflective consideration of Badroulbadour's exquisite beauty. In the next-to-last line of the poem, Stevens did not hesitate to give full stress to the three main words and let very light accents fall on the preposition and conjunction:

The bundle of the body and the feet.

It was important to hasten over the merely physical attributes of the princess, and the metrical telescoping of the line fits that intention without disturbing the processional rhythm.

The poem surely adds a wry layer of meaning to Stevens' epigram in Adagia, "The poet makes silk dresses out of worms."

External links

• "Worms at Heaven's Gate" • MP3 audio recording in the public domain (MP3)—read by other than Wallace Stevens