Eight lines, then eight more, and Stevens conjures a wake where the corpse's horny feet protrude from the sheet that was too short to cover her. Let be be finale of seem: the line has become a philosophical touchstone. Stevens was an insurance executive who wrote poems in his head while walking to work in Hartford. This one moves from the muscular roller of big cigars to death's cold embroidery, from the ordinary to the absolute. The emperor of ice cream is all there is, which is to say: the sensual world is the only world. The poem refuses both grief and transcendence.