To The One Of Fictive Music is a poem

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 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",...

's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922, so it is in the public domain.

To The One Of Fictive Music  Sister and mother and diviner love,  And of the sisterhood of the living dead  Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom,  And of the fragrant mothers the most dear  And queen, and of diviner love the day  And flame and summer and sweet fire, no thread  Of cloudy silver sprinkles in your gown  Its venom of renown, and on your head  No crown is simpler than the simple hair.  Now, of the music summoned by the birth  That separates us from the wind and sea,  Yet leaves us in them, until earth becomes,  By being so much of the things we are,  Gross effigy and simulacrum, none  Gives motion to perfection more serene  Than yours, out of our own imperfections wrought,  Most rare, or ever of more kindred air  In the laborious weaving that you wear.  For so retentive of themselves are men  That music is intensest which proclaims  The near, the clear, and vaunts the clearest bloom,  And of all the vigils musing the obscure,  That apprehends the most which sees and names,  As in your name, an image that is sure,  Among the arrant spices of the sun,  O bough and bush and scented vine, in whom  We give ourselves our likest issuance.  Yet not too like, yet not so like to be  Too near, too clear, saving a little to endow  Our feigning with the strange unlike, whence springs  The difference that heavenly pity brings.  For this, musician, in your girdle fixed  Bear other perfumes. On your pale head wear  A band entwining, set with fatal stones.  Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:  The imagination that we spurned and crave.

Stevens, the musical imagist, invokes the muse of poetry for "an image that is sure" in a kind of
music that "gives motion to perfection more serene" than other forms of music summoned by the human condition.
The poet aims at a kind of simplicity and spurns "the venom of renown". The poet's muse might be
compared in these respects to Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

' philosophical muse. Socrates condemned the sophists, and
Stevens's queen rejects vices analogous to theirs in poetry. The dim view of renown poetically reinforces
the Adagia dictum, "Poetry is, (and should be,) for the poet, a source of pleasure and satisfaction,
not a source of honors."

There is a heaviness in the human condition that poetry and other forms of inspiration alleviate. (See
for instance the human, "heavy and heavy", in The Wind Shifts

The Wind Shifts

"The Wind Shifts" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1917, so it is in the publicdomain....

. Also the malady in Banal Sojourn

Banal Sojourn

"Banal Sojourn" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was originally published in 1919, so it is in the public domain....

.)
The poet "muses the obscure" in what is near to us, vaunting the clearest bloom among those offered
by the "sisterhood of the living dead". This way of characterizing the various muses may emphasize
humanity's mortality and limited powers.

But the nearness is not idiosyncratic. "Poetry is not personal," as Stevens writes in Adagia. And the clearness is not too clear. The poet's musician resists the intellect,
"saving a little to endow our feignings with the strange unlike". This is an expression of the Adagia thesis that poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully.

The poem concludes with a reminder of the musical imagist's serious purpose. The poetic musician wears a band "set with fatal stones".