Line 34: “Tyre”- A Phoenician city.
- Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
Line 36: “Troy”- An ancient city in present day Turkey.
- Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
Line 40: “Aeolus”-The Greek god of wind.
- Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
Line 44: “Choir”- According to critics, Crane’s mention of a choir is used to create a melody of points in time that are indistinguishable, “his ecstatic recognition of the Bridge as a ‘choir, translating time’ into the ‘multitudinous Verb’ of the imagination’s ‘Everpresence’ in ‘Atlantis.’ The device of paradox is one of the linguistic constructions by which the poet uses his medium to yoke opposites and render the implicit but vibrant harmony of things logically irreconcilable” (Tratchenberg).
Line 47: “Psalm of Cathay”-There are two types of interpretation with the Psalm of Cathay critics grapple with. The historical conclusions draw more upon the actual background of the idea, while the literary reading focuses more on Crane’s role in the Psalm. According to Tratchenberg, “the destination of the protagonist’s journey, like Columbus’s, had been called Cathay, the traditional symbol of the East. Atlantis was the sunken island of the west-older even than the Orient” (Tratchenberg 126). Yet an alternative viewpoint is that in the Bridge, Crane “saw a great loom of eternity, a Jason’s voyage leading to Atlantis and Cathay, of consciousness, knowledge, spiritual unity. The Bridge is for him the Psalm of Cathay” (Sugg 9).
Line 48: “Paradigm”- The significance of the paradigm is that it gives readers a sense of the experience Crane was trying to enlighten his readers with, one that focused on love and the truths of it. According to Tratchenberg, “in ‘Atlantis’ what has been ‘made’ is at last recognized and named: ‘O Thou Steeled Cognizance.’ Its properties are not magical but conceptual: it is a ‘paradigm’ of love and beauty, the eternal ideas which lie behind and inform human experience” (Tratchenberg 129).
Line 59: “Lariat”- Defined by the OED as “a rope used for picketing horses or mules; a cord or rope with a noose used in catching wild cattle.”
Line 62: “Organ”- invokes serious, gave undertones, as it is followed by contributing adjectives to describe the tone as “sound of doom.”
Like hails…
…for the helm.