1.
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
2.
You cannot choose your battlefield,
The Gods do that for you;
But you can plant a standard
Where a standard never flew.
Nathalia Crane
3.
Across the downs a hummingbird Came dipping through the bowers, He pivoted on emptiness To scrutinize the flowers.
Nathalia Crane
4.
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
5.
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
6.
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
7.
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
8.
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
9.
The rose has told
In one simplicity
That never life
Relinquishes a bloom
But to bestow
An ancient confidence.
Nathalia Crane
10.
Let go the lure
The striving to unmake;
Behold the truth
Whenever heart may ache
There is a glory
In a great mistake.
Nathalia Crane
11.
There is a glory in a great mistake.
Nathalia Crane
12.
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
13.
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
14.
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
15.
I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine. But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.
Nathalia Crane
16.
Great is the rose
Infected by the tomb,
Yet burgeoning
Indifferent to death.
Nathalia Crane
17.
Great is the rose
That challenges the crypt,
And quotes milleniums
Against the grave.
Nathalia Crane
18.
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
19.
When you return, the youngest of the seers, Released from fetters of ancestral pose, There will be beauty waiting down the years Revisions of the ruby and the rose.
Nathalia Crane
20.
The world is growing gentle, But few know what she owes To the understanding lily And the judgment of the rose.
Nathalia Crane