Hart Crane - The Bridge

13 Sourced Quotes

View all Hart Crane Quotes
The phonographs of hades in the brain Are tunnels that re-wind themselves, and love A burnt match skating in a urinal —

Hart Crane
And why do I often meet your visage here,
Your eyes like agate lanterns—on and on Below the toothpaste and the dandruff ads?
And did their riding eyes right through your side,
And did their eyes like unwashed platters ride?
And Death, aloft—gigantically down
Probing through you—toward me, O evermore!

Hart Crane
And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Hart Crane
O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

Hart Crane
Yes, Walt,
Afoot again, and onward without halt, –
Not soon, nor suddenly, – no, never to let go
My hand
in yours,
Walt Whitman –
so –

Hart Crane
And through that cordage, threading with its call
One arc synoptic of all tides below –
Their labyrinthine mouths of history
Pouring reply as though all ships at sea
Complighted in one vibrant breath made cry, –
'Make thy love sure – to weave whose song we ply!'

Hart Crane
And biased by full sails, meridians reel Thy purpose — still one shore beyond desire! The sea's green crying towers a-sway, Beyond.

Hart Crane
Damp tonnage and alluvial march of days... Tortured with history, its one will — flow!

Hart Crane
O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,

Hart Crane
Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks, A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene.

Hart Crane
We left the haven hanging in the night –
Sheened harbor lanterns backward fled the keel.
Pacific here at time's end, bearing corn. –
Eyes stammer through the pangs of dust and steel.

Hart Crane
The swift red flesh, a winter king—
Who squired the glacier woman down the sky?
She ran the neighing canyons all the spring;
She spouted arms; she rose with maize—to die.

Hart Crane
But the star-glistered salver of infinity, The circle, blind crucible of endless space, Is sluiced by motion, — subjugated never.

Hart Crane