Nathalia Crane quotes:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Let go the lure The striving to unmake; Behold the truth Whenever heart may ache There is a glory In a great mistake.

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.

You cannot choose your battlefield, God does that for you. But you can plant a standard where a standard never flew.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

There is a glory in a great mistake.