The Broken Tower

By Hart Crane
The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell Of a spent day - to wander the cathedral lawn From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell !a"e you not heard, ha"e you not seen that corps Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway #ntiphonal carillons launched before The stars are caught and hi"ed in the sun$s ray% The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower& #nd swing I know not where Their tongues engra"e 'embrane through marrow, my long-scattered score Of broken inter"als( #nd I, their sexton sla"e) O"al encyclicals in canyons heaping The impasse high with choir *anked "oices slain) +agodas campaniles with re"eilles out leapingO terraced echoes prostrate on the plain)( #nd so it was I entered the broken world To trace the "isionary company of lo"e, its "oice #n instant in the wind ,I know not whither hurled*ut not for long to hold each desperate choice 'y world I poured *ut was it cognate, scored Of that tribunal monarch of the air .hose thighs embron/es earth, strikes crystal .ord In wounds pledges once to hope - cleft to despair% The steep encroachments of my blood left me 0o answer ,could blood hold such a lofty tower #s flings the 1uestion true%- -or is it she .hose sweet mortality stirs latent power%#nd through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes 'y "eins recall and add, re"i"ed and sure The angelus of wars my chest e"okes2 .hat I hold healed, original now, and pure( #nd builds, within, a tower that is not stone ,0ot stone can 3acket hea"en- - but slip Of pebbles, - "isible wings of silence sown In a/ure circles, widening as they dip The matrix of the heart, lift down the eyes That shrines the 1uiet lake and swells a tower( The commodious, tall decorum of that sky 4nseals her earth, and lifts lo"e in its shower

Harold Hart Crane was an American poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that is difficult, highly styli ed, and very ambitious in its scope. !n his most ambitious wor", The Bridge, Crane sought to write an epic poem in the vein of The #aste $and that e%pressed something more sincere and optimistic than the ironic despair that Crane found in Eliot&s poetry. !n the years following his suicide at the age of '(, Crane has come to be seen as one of the most influential poets of his generation.