Stephen Crane Poems

'It was wrong to do this,' said the angel.
'You should live like a flower,
Holding malice like a puppy,
Waging war like a lambkin.'
...

Places among the stars,
Soft gardens near the sun,
Keep your distant beauty;
Shed no beams upon my weak heart.
...

Each small gleam was a voice,
A lantern voice --
In little songs of carmine, violet, green, gold.
A chorus of colours came over the water;
...

"Truth," said a traveller,
"Is a rock, a mighty fortress;
Often have I been to it,
Even to its highest tower,
...

I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
and carousing in sin.
...

When the prophet, a complacent fat man,
Arrived at the mountain-top,
He cried: "Woe to my knowledge!
I intended to see good white lands
...

Forth went the candid man
And spoke freely to the wind --
When he looked about him he was in a far strange country.
...

UNWIND my riddle.
Cruel as hawks the hours fly;
Wounded men seldom come home to die;
The hard waves see an arm flung high;
...

THOU art my love
And thou art the peace of sundown
When the blue shadows soothe
And the grasses and the leaves sleep
...