Among twenty snowy mountains, / The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird.
-- Narrator (Canto 1)

Importance: These are the first three lines of the poem that comprise the first canto. Here Stevens expresses a near impossible visual perspective of a singly moving eye of a blackbird amidst a vast mountainous vista. The black of the bird and its eye is pitched against the implied white of snow-covered mountains. The mood is one of eerie stillness, replete with a nervous pathos. The moving eye of the blackbird, in this introductory vantage, marks an esoteric sentience that is alluded to throughout the poem.

A man and a woman / Are one. / A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one.
-- Narrator (Canto 4)

Importance: These lines reflect matrimony and heteronormative coupling. The sentiment that flows from the verse is that sentience is somehow universal and un-individuated. This is part of the poem’s lingering esotericism, which nods towards...