When, at the wearier end of November, Her old light moves along the branches, Feebly, slowly, depending upon them; When the body of Jesus hangs in a pallor, Humanly near, and the figure of Mary, Touched on by hoar-frost, shrinks in a shelter Made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen; When over the houses, a golden illusion Brings back an earlier season of quiet And quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness—
Stevens's post-Christian sensibility channels emotions into nature rather than God and associated religious figures like Jesus and Mary.
Stevens's poetic naturalism was a significant achievement, from which he may or may not have retreated at the end of his life, depending on what one makes of the evidence of a deathbed conversion to Catholicism.
According to the Wallace Stevens Checklist, by Samuel French Morse, Jackson R. Bryer, and Joseph N. Riddel (Denver: Alan Swallow; 1963), p. 54: "None of these poems was reprinted in the first edition of Harmonium."
The 1931 edition of Harmonium contains the following poems from the group as separate entities: "The Surprises of the Superhuman" (C.P., 98); "Negation" (C.P., 97–98); "The Death of a Soldier," which was in Poetry as "Life contracts and death is expected" (C.P., 97); and "Lunar Paraphrase" (C.P., 107), which Miss Monroe did not include [in the Poetry printing].