Nathalia Crane Quotes

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

Nathalia Crane

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

Nathalia Crane

#3. There is a glory in a great mistake.

Nathalia Crane

#4. Great is the rose Infected by the tomb, Yet burgeoning Indifferent to death.

Nathalia Crane

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

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

Nathalia Crane

#12. 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

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

Nathalia Crane

#14. Great is the rose That challenges the crypt, And quotes milleniums Against the grave.

Nathalia Crane

#15. You cannot choose your battlefield,
God does that for you;
But you can plant a standard
Where a standard never flew.
(From The Colors)

Nathalia Crane

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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