Nathalia Crane Quotes

28 Sourced Quotes

Said the tiger to the lily,
Said the viper to the rose,
Let us marry so our children
May attain the double pose. With a feline half a flower —
With the attar in the asp
We could institute a slaughter
That would make a planet gasp.

Nathalia Crane
Oh I'm in love with the janitor's boy,
And the janitor's boy loves me;
He's going to hunt for a desert isle
In our geography.

Nathalia Crane
The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down;
The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown; The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May;
But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way. Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes,
Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.

Nathalia Crane
A thousand ardent oilers swung the long spout 'twixt their nods,
And tried to glimpse a meaning in the challenge of the gods. And then one night there landed on a Mineola swale
A plane that looked like pewter, with a carrier of mail. Its wings were tinged like tea-box skins, each truss of shadow gray,
Its cabin but an alcove slung beneath a metal ray. The Spirit of St. Louis was inscribed upon the lee;
It came from out a province that had never seen the sea.

Nathalia Crane
Finally she faltered;
Saw at last, forsooth,
Every gaudy color
Is a bit of truth.
Then the gates were opened;
Miracles were seen;
That instructed damsel
Donned a gown of green; Wore it in a churchyard,
All arrayed with care;
And a painted rainbow
Shone above her there.

Nathalia Crane
A precious place is Paradise and none may know its worth,
But Eden ever longeth for the knicknacks of the earth. The angels grow quite wistful over worldly things below;
They hear the hurdy-gurdies in the Candle Makers Row. They listen for the laughter from the antics of the earth;
They lower pails from heaven's walls to catch the milk-maids mirth.

Nathalia Crane
In the darkness, who would answer for the color of a rose,
Or the vestments of the May moth and the pilgrimage it goes?

Nathalia Crane
Great is the rose
That challenges the crypt,
And quotes milleniums
Against the grave.

Nathalia Crane
A single-motored miracle, a lead mine on each flank;
Below a shadow swept and awed the hundred-fathom bank.

Nathalia Crane
Great is the rose
Infected by the tomb,
Yet burgeoning
Indifferent to death.

Nathalia Crane
He found the harem filled with rocking maids
Surrendered to the orgies of the sob.

Nathalia Crane
The sun shall shine in ages yet to be,
The musing moon illumine pastures dim,
And afterwards a new nativity
For all who slept the dreamless interim.

Nathalia Crane
Lo and behold! God made this
starry wold,
The maggot and the mold; lo and
behold!
He taught the grass contentment
blade by blade,
The sanctity of sameness in a shade.

Nathalia Crane
Once a pallid Vestal
Doubted truth in blue;
Listed red in ruin,
Harried every hue; Barricaded vision,
Garbed herself in sighs;
Ridiculed the birthmarks
Of the butterflies.

Nathalia Crane
The starry brocade of the summer night
Is linked to us as part of our estate;
And every bee that wings its sidelong flight
Assurance of a sweeter, fairer fate.

Nathalia Crane
Oh, we have had great lovers that we followed to the pyre;
Our boasts out-do the Sabine girls—the Mosque of St. Sophia.
And we are very sure of ours, for when a city falls,
They seize us and they love us and they hurl us from the walls.

Nathalia Crane
Across the downs a hummingbird
Came dipping through the bowers,
He pivoted on emptiness
To scrutinize the flowers.

Nathalia Crane
And the eyes of all look upward seeing sign-word drawing nigh,
The stony wings of Egypt coming back across the sky; We hear the clinking tamborine of Miriam anew;
We believe in every miracle since Lindbergh flew the blue — The wonder of the long draw when the bowstring is a thread —
The beauty of a courage that can raise the wings of lead.

Nathalia Crane
The gods released a vision on a world forespent and dull;
They sent it as a challenge by the sea hawk and the gull. It roused the Norman eagerness, the Albion cliffs turned red:
You fly the wings of logic — can you fly the wings of lead?

Nathalia Crane
The world is growing gentle,
But few know what she owes
To the understanding lily
And the judgment of the rose.

Nathalia Crane
I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine.
But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.

Nathalia Crane
Treating the sword blade the same as the staff,
Turning the chariot wheel into chaff.
Toppling a pillar and nudging a wall,
Building a sand pile to counter each fall.
Yielding to nothing — not even the rose,
The dust has its reasons wherever goes.

Nathalia Crane
The rose has told In one simplicity.
That never life
Relinquishes a bloom
But to bestow
An ancient confidence.

Nathalia Crane
The very serpents bite their tails; the bees forget to sting,
For a language so celestial setteth up a wondering. And the touch of absent mindedness is more than any line,
Since direction counts for nothing when the gods set up a sign.

Nathalia Crane
Cloud-made mountains towered,
Beckoning to me;
Visionary triremes
Talked about the sea...

Nathalia Crane