The wind attendant on the solstices Blows on the shutters of the metropoles, Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls The grand ideas of the villages.
Horizons, full of night's midsummer blaze; Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate Through all its purples to the final slate, Persisting bleakly in an icy haze;
(The difference between Helen Vendler and Harold Bloom on this matter is noted in the main Harmonium essay, the section "The musical imagist".)
[4] Bates though doesn't register the despair for he understands "Laforguian boredom" as temperamentally uncongenial to Stevens, mattering to him chiefly as something to overcome.
Harold Bloom interprets the poem as belonging to a triad in Harmonium, the other elements being "The Snow Man" and "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon."