Harold Hart Crane Poems

There are no stars to-night
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.
...

The willows carried a slow sound,
A sarabande the wind mowed on the mead.
I could never remember
...

A land of leaning ice
Hugged by plaster-grey arches of sky,
Flings itself silently
Into eternity.
...

This tuft that thrives on saline nothingness,
Inverted octopus with heavenward arms
Thrust parching from a palm-bole hard by the cove⎯
A bird almost⎯of almost bird alarms,
...

The host, he says that all is well
And the fire-wood glow is bright;
The food has a warm and tempting smell,-
But on the window licks the night.
...

Moonmoth and grasshopper that flee our page
And still wing on, untarnished of the name
We pinion to your bodies to assuage
...

Yes, I being
the terrible puppet of my dreams, shall
lavish this on you-
the dense mine of the orchid, split in two.
...

Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
...

You who desired so much--in vain to ask--
Yet fed you hunger like an endless task,
Dared dignify the labor, bless the quest--
Achieved that stillness ultimately best,
...

Through the bound cable strands, the arching path
Upward, veering with light, the flight of strings,—
Taut miles of shuttling moonlight syncopate
The whispered rush, telepathy of wires.
...