Bibliographic Information Author Crane, Hart Genre Poetry Journal or Book White Buildings Publisher Boni & Liveright Year of Publication 1926 Pages 37-44 Additional information - “And so we may arrive by Talmud skill And profane Greek to raise the building up Of Helen’s house against the Ismaelite, King of Thogarma, and his habergeons Brimstony, blue and fiery; and the force Of King Abaddon, and the beast of Cuttim ; Which Rabb David Kimchi, Onkelos, And Aben Ezra do interpret Rome.” —THE ALCHEMIST I The mind has shown itself at times Too much the baked and labeled dough Divided by accepted multitudes. Across the stacked partitions of the day— Across the memoranda, baseball scores, The stenographic smiles and stock quotations Smutty wings flash out equivocations. The mind is brushed by sparrow wings; Numbers, rebuffed by asphalt, crowd The margins of the day, accent the curbs, Convoying divers dawns on every corner To druggist, barber and tobacconist, Until the graduate opacities of evening Take them away as suddenly to somewhere Virginal perhaps, less fragmentary, cool. road urban There is the world dimensional for those untwisted by the love of things irreconcilable . . . And yet, suppose some evening I forgot The fare and transfer, yet got by that way Without recall,— lost yet poised in traffic. Then I might find your eyes across an aisle, Still flickering with those prefigurations— Prodigal, yet uncontested now, Half-riant before the jerky window frame. road traffic affect nostalgia There is some way, I think, to touch Those hands of yours that count the nights Stippled with pink and green advertisements. And now, before its arteries turn dark, I would have you meet this bartered blood. Imminent in his dream, none better knows The white wafer cheek of love, or offers words Lightly as moonlight on the eaves meets snow. Reflective conversion of all things At your deep blush, when ecstasies thread The limbs and belly, when rainbows spread Impinging on the throat and sides . . . Inevitable, the body of the world Weeps in inventive dust for the hiatus That winks above it, bluet in your breasts. The earth may glide diaphanous to death; But if I lift my arms it is to bend To you who turned away once, Helen, knowing The press of troubled hands, too alternate With steel and soil to hold you endlessly. I meet you, therefore, in that eventual flame You found in final chains, no captive then— Beyond their million brittle, bloodshot eyes; White, through white cities passed on to assume That world which comes to each of us alone. Accept a lone eye riveted to your plane, Bent axle of devotion along companion ways That beat, continuous, to hourless days— One inconspicuous, glowing orb of praise. II Brazen hypnotics glitter here; Glee shifts from foot to foot, Magnetic to their tremolo. This crashing opera bouffe, Blest excursion! this ricochet From roof to roof— Know, Olympians, we are breathless While nigger cupids scour the stars! A thousand light shrugs balance us Through snarling hails of melody. White shadows slip across the floor Splayed like cards from a loose hand; Rhythmic ellipses lead into canters Until somewhere a rooster banters. Greet naïvely—yet intrepidly New soothings, new amazements That cornets introduce at every turn— And you may fall downstairs with me With perfect grace and equanimity. Or, plaintively scud past shores Where, by strange harmonic laws All relatives, serene and cool, Sit rocked in patent armchairs. O, I have known metallic paradises Where cuckoos clucked to finches Above the deft catastrophes of drums. While titters hailed the groans of death Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen The incunabula of the divine grotesque. This music has a reassuring way. The siren of the springs of guilty song— Let us take her on the incandescent wax Striated with nuances, nervosities That we are heir to: she is still so young, We cannot frown upon her as she smiles, Dipping here in this cultivated storm Among slim skaters of the gardened skies. III Capped arbiter of beauty in this street That narrows darkly into motor dawn,— You, here beside me, delicate ambassador Of intricate slain numbers that arise In whispers, naked of steel; religious gunman! Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon, And in other ways than as the wind settles On the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city: Let us unbind our throats of fear and pity. We even, Who drove speediest destruction In corymbulous formations of mechanics,— Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malice Plangent over meadows, and looked down On rifts of torn and empty houses Like old women with teeth unjubilant That waited faintly, briefly and in vain: metaphor dawn car night urban infrastructure driving speed mechanic weapon street engine sound bridge We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembers The tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus, The mounted, yielding cities of the air! That saddled sky that shook down vertical Repeated play of fire—no hypogeum Of wave or rock was good against one hour. We did not ask for that, but have survived, And will persist to speak again before All stubble streets that have not curved To memory, or known the ominous lifted arm That lowers down the arc of Helen’s brow To saturate with blessing and dismay. weapon haptic city road metaphor intertext A goose, tobacco and cologne— Three winged and gold-shod prophecies of heaven, The lavish heart shall always have to leaven And spread with bells and voices, and atone The abating shadows of our conscript dust. Anchises’ navel, dripping of the sea,— The hands Erasmus dipped in gleaming tides, Gathered the voltage of blown blood and vine; Delve upward for the new and scattered wine, O brother-thief of time, that we recall. Laugh out the meagre penance of their days Who dare not share with us the breath released, The substance drilled and spent beyond repair For golden, or the shadow of gold hair. Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the height The imagination spans beyond despair, Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# QUERY38abf86b79ccf61c9eaa329cc24784f0
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# ERR9d760f30b61a3a82f02ea47777882557
“And so we may arrive by Talmud skill And profane Greek to raise the building up Of Helen’s house against the Ismaelite, King of Thogarma, and his habergeons Brimstony, blue and fiery; and the force Of King Abaddon, and the beast of Cuttim ; Which Rabb David Kimchi, Onkelos, And Aben Ezra do interpret Rome.” —THE ALCHEMIST
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 4dadc8a82ad14d117cf5cf8b4da477c6
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 5147a913926a6abdb8cf7974f5350ffb
The mind has shown itself at times Too much the baked and labeled dough Divided by accepted multitudes. Across the stacked partitions of the day— Across the memoranda, baseball scores, The stenographic smiles and stock quotations Smutty wings flash out equivocations.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 946f9115d78b4563ba62efa724d506bb
The mind is brushed by sparrow wings; Numbers, rebuffed by asphalt, crowd The margins of the day, accent the curbs, Convoying divers dawns on every corner To druggist, barber and tobacconist, Until the graduate opacities of evening Take them away as suddenly to somewhere Virginal perhaps, less fragmentary, cool.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 722d91cd97ab599f1371c46ec4826b56
There is the world dimensional for those untwisted by the love of things irreconcilable . . .
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 08507909eaf8d27a296be035c80dcec8
And yet, suppose some evening I forgot The fare and transfer, yet got by that way Without recall,— lost yet poised in traffic. Then I might find your eyes across an aisle, Still flickering with those prefigurations— Prodigal, yet uncontested now, Half-riant before the jerky window frame.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 11fb0bf7358cfab24304a77ae178905a
There is some way, I think, to touch Those hands of yours that count the nights Stippled with pink and green advertisements. And now, before its arteries turn dark, I would have you meet this bartered blood. Imminent in his dream, none better knows The white wafer cheek of love, or offers words Lightly as moonlight on the eaves meets snow.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 91e0a92123f008ac2e7e6afac045e3ac
Reflective conversion of all things At your deep blush, when ecstasies thread The limbs and belly, when rainbows spread Impinging on the throat and sides . . . Inevitable, the body of the world Weeps in inventive dust for the hiatus That winks above it, bluet in your breasts.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 6d9bff90452d9449b9a48104721da3f4
The earth may glide diaphanous to death; But if I lift my arms it is to bend To you who turned away once, Helen, knowing The press of troubled hands, too alternate With steel and soil to hold you endlessly. I meet you, therefore, in that eventual flame You found in final chains, no captive then— Beyond their million brittle, bloodshot eyes; White, through white cities passed on to assume That world which comes to each of us alone.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 00bd5d9e7623cfc50d9cfd00826a2956
Accept a lone eye riveted to your plane, Bent axle of devotion along companion ways That beat, continuous, to hourless days— One inconspicuous, glowing orb of praise.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 6e1532e9396cbbd9b989ac0f803577eb
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# ac89115a317f7b2c65671334d82ec3ca
Brazen hypnotics glitter here; Glee shifts from foot to foot, Magnetic to their tremolo. This crashing opera bouffe, Blest excursion! this ricochet From roof to roof— Know, Olympians, we are breathless While nigger cupids scour the stars!
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 4b80dc5d5f6f7edf9388a1386cfa63ca
A thousand light shrugs balance us Through snarling hails of melody. White shadows slip across the floor Splayed like cards from a loose hand; Rhythmic ellipses lead into canters Until somewhere a rooster banters.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 45a8da93ac3d1c0ab1c0e9e0a0013cc1
Greet naïvely—yet intrepidly New soothings, new amazements That cornets introduce at every turn— And you may fall downstairs with me With perfect grace and equanimity. Or, plaintively scud past shores Where, by strange harmonic laws All relatives, serene and cool, Sit rocked in patent armchairs.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 73a40c0b01094d5525dc40e8ef857c08
O, I have known metallic paradises Where cuckoos clucked to finches Above the deft catastrophes of drums. While titters hailed the groans of death Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen The incunabula of the divine grotesque. This music has a reassuring way.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 00c3b3e54258b3ecb37ab9e6ee5618ec
The siren of the springs of guilty song— Let us take her on the incandescent wax Striated with nuances, nervosities That we are heir to: she is still so young, We cannot frown upon her as she smiles, Dipping here in this cultivated storm Among slim skaters of the gardened skies.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 1654cc06c7bef0948718ca0c1ddeebc1
III
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 38ad6c3df8a073b136373c316fa669f7
Capped arbiter of beauty in this street That narrows darkly into motor dawn,— You, here beside me, delicate ambassador Of intricate slain numbers that arise In whispers, naked of steel; religious gunman! Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon, And in other ways than as the wind settles On the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city: Let us unbind our throats of fear and pity. We even, Who drove speediest destruction In corymbulous formations of mechanics,— Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malice Plangent over meadows, and looked down On rifts of torn and empty houses Like old women with teeth unjubilant That waited faintly, briefly and in vain:
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 498b9301c7ddeba074a16560cc1d81fe
We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembers The tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus, The mounted, yielding cities of the air! That saddled sky that shook down vertical Repeated play of fire—no hypogeum Of wave or rock was good against one hour. We did not ask for that, but have survived, And will persist to speak again before All stubble streets that have not curved To memory, or known the ominous lifted arm That lowers down the arc of Helen’s brow To saturate with blessing and dismay.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 0efb8495c761250ef5895b08e2e1ad50
A goose, tobacco and cologne— Three winged and gold-shod prophecies of heaven, The lavish heart shall always have to leaven And spread with bells and voices, and atone The abating shadows of our conscript dust.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 62e1ecd0f166421023ee959072640a3c
Anchises’ navel, dripping of the sea,— The hands Erasmus dipped in gleaming tides, Gathered the voltage of blown blood and vine; Delve upward for the new and scattered wine, O brother-thief of time, that we recall. Laugh out the meagre penance of their days Who dare not share with us the breath released, The substance drilled and spent beyond repair For golden, or the shadow of gold hair. Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the height The imagination spans beyond despair, Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer.
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen# 9d195ec5d6ed91d5d91e2b2fce534538