Page:The Collected Poems of Hart Crane.djvu/43

With June the mountain laurel broke through green
And filled the forest with what clustrous sheen!
Potomac lilies, —then the Pontiac rose,
And Klondike edelweiss of occult snows!
White banks of moonlight came descending valleys—
How speechful on oak-vizored palisades,
As vibrantly I following down Sequoia alleys.
Heard thunder’s eloquence through green arcades
Set trumpets breathing in each clump and grass tuft—’til
Gold autumn, captured, crowned the trembling hill!

Panis Angelicus! Eyes tranquil with the blaze
Of love’s own diametric gaze, of love’s amaze!
Not greatest, thou, —not first, nor last, —but near
And onward yielding past my utmost year.
Familiar, thou, as mendicants in public places;
Evasive—too—as dayspring’s spreading arc to trace is:—
Our Meistersinger, thou set breath in steel;
And it was thou who on the boldest heel
Stood up and flung the span on even wing
Of that great Bridge, our Myth, whereof I sing!

Years of the Modern! Propulsions toward what capes?
But thou, Panis Angelicus, hast thou not seen
And passed that Barrier that none escapes—
But knows it leastwise as death-strife?—O, something green,
Beyond all sesames of science was thy choice
Wherewith to bind us throbbing with one voice,