Nathalia Crane (1913 – 1998)
Poet and novelist who became famous as a child prodigy after the publication of her first book of poetry at age 10.
Great is the rose
Infected by the tomb,
Yet burgeoning
Indifferent to death.
Some of the critics explained the work by insisting that the child was some sort of medium, an instrument unaware of what was played upon it; others, considering the book a hoax, scorned the fact that any child could have written verses so smooth in execution and so remarkable in spiritual overtones. ... The appeal of such lines is not that they have been written by a child but by a poet.
The world is growing gentle,
But few know what she owes
To the understanding lily
And the judgment of the rose.
I remember that Bob had bought several books during the trip, and they were in sight. One was a collection of verse by a talented child named Nathalia Crane, then making a sizable splash in the American literary world.
The very serpents bite their tails; the bees forget to sting,
For a language so celestial setteth up a wondering.
It seems impossible to me that a girl so immature could have written these poems. They are beyond the powers of a girl of twelve. The sophisticated viewpoint of sex ... knowledge of history and archeology found in these pages place them beyond the reach of any juvenile mind.
Finally she faltered;
Saw at last, forsooth,
Every gaudy color
Is a bit of truth.
Then the gates were opened;
Miracles were seen;
That instructed damsel
Donned a gown of green;
Across the downs a hummingbird
Came dipping through the bowers,
He pivoted on emptiness
To scrutinize the flowers.
A thousand ardent oilers swung the long spout 'twixt their nods,
And tried to glimpse a meaning in the challenge of the gods.
I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine.
But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.
He found the harem filled with rocking maids
Surrendered to the orgies of the sob.
A precious place is Paradise and none may know its worth,
But Eden ever longeth for the knicknacks of the earth.
Great is the rose
That challenges the crypt,
And quotes milleniums
Against the grave.
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.
The rose has told In one simplicity.
That never life
Relinquishes a bloom
But to bestow
An ancient confidence.
Treating the sword blade the same as the staff,
Turning the chariot wheel into chaff.
Toppling a pillar and nudging a wall,
Building a sand pile to counter each fall.
Yielding to nothing — not even the rose,
The dust has its reasons wherever goes.
He'll carry me off, I know that he will,
For his hair is exceedingly red;
And the only thing that occurs to me
Is to dutifully shiver in bed.
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.
Oh, we have had great lovers that we followed to the pyre;
Our boasts out-do the Sabine girls—the Mosque of St. Sophia.
And we are very sure of ours, for when a city falls,
They seize us and they love us and they hurl us from the walls.
Cloud-made mountains towered,
Beckoning to me;
Visionary triremes
Talked about the sea...