But this is not one particular dawn, it's the "many dawns" in which the scene can be witnessed. The seagull is cold, "chill," from his "rippling rest.
The "dip" and "pivot" of the gull's flight provide vivid descriptions of motion. These words also reply to the visual appearance of a suspension bridge, with the "dips" of its cables, "pivoting" from high to low.
Lines Shedding white rings of tumult, building high Over the chained bay waters Liberty-- The seagull flies in circles above the bridge, higher and higher.
In the poet's mind, the wings of the gull create "tumult" in the air as they pass. The word "tumult" also means "chaos" or "disorder," to which the order and form of the bridge provide a stark contrast. The gull is colored white," and whiteness also suggests white-capped waves in the water and the color of the dawn air.
The bird is like an architect — it "builds" a pattern over the bridge. How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him, Shedding white rings of tumult, building high Over the chained bay waters Liberty—. Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes As apparitional as sails that cross Some page of figures to be filed away; —Till elevators drop us from our day.
I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene Never disclosed, but hastened to again, Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;. And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced As though the sun took step of thee, yet left Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,— Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!
Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets, Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning, A jest falls from the speechless caravan. Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks, A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene; All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn. Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still. And obscure as that heaven of the Jews, Thy guerdon. Accolade thou dost bestow Of anonymity time cannot raise: Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.
O harp and altar, of the fury fused, How could mere toil align thy choiring strings! Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge, Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,—. Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars, Beading thy path—condense eternity: And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.
Under thy shadow by the piers I waited; Only in darkness is thy shadow clear. The City's fiery parcels all undone, Already snow submerges an iron year. O Sleepless as the river under thee, Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod, Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend And of the curveship lend a myth to God. Used with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. The apple on its bough is her desire,— Shining suspension, mimic of the sun. The bough has caught her breath up, and her voice, Dumbly articulate in the slant and rise Of branch on branch above her, blurs her eyes.
She is prisoner of the tree and its green fingers. And so she comes to dream herself the tree, The wind possessing her, weaving her young veins, Holding her to the sky and its quick blue, Drowning the fever of her hands in sunlight. She has no memory, nor fear, nor hope Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet. National Poetry Month. Materials for Teachers Teach This Poem. Poems for Kids. Poetry for Teens.
Lesson Plans. Resources for Teachers. That dash occupies the elusive brief interval between incredulity which is shaded by wonder and disbelief which is shaded by doubt , between the exclamation point and the question mark: How many dawns?
So many dawns! The ambiguous or is it ambivalent? A master of syntactic delay, Crane models how the mind begins in curiosity, is rocked by doubt, resolves in wonder, and is moved to praise. I, too, like it more than many other things. The way it enters without knocking and is there.
0コメント