Young Adventure Part 11

I shall go away To the brown hills, the quiet ones, The vast, the mountainous, the rolling, Sun-fired and drowsy!

My horse snuffs delicately At the strange wind; He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs tramp the dust.

The road winds, straightens, Slashes a marsh, Shoulders out a bridge, Then -- Again the hills.

Unchanged, innumerable, Bowing huge, round backs; Holding secret, immense converse: In gusty voices, Fruitful, fecund, toiling Like yoked black oxen.

The clouds pa.s.s like great, slow thoughts And vanish In the intense blue.

My horse lopes; the saddle creaks and sways.

A thousand glittering spears of sun slant from on high.

The immensity, the s.p.a.ces, Are like the s.p.a.ces Between star and star.

The hills sleep.

If I put my hand on one, I would feel the vast heave of its breath.

I would start away before it awakened And shook the world from its shoulders.

A cicada's cry deepens the hot silence.

The hills open To show a slope of poppies, Ardent, n.o.ble, heroic, A flare, a great flame of orange; Giving sleepy, brittle scent That stings the lungs.

A creeping wind slips through them like a ferret; they bow and dance, answering Beauty's voice...

The horse whinnies. I dismount And tie him to the grey worn fence.

I set myself against the javelins of gra.s.s and sun; And climb the rounded breast, That flows like a sea-wave.

The summit crackles with heat, there is no shelter, no hollow from the flagellating glare.

I lie down and look at the sky, shading my eyes.

My body becomes strange, the sun takes it and changes it, it does not feel, it is like the body of another.

The air blazes. The air is diamond.

Small noises move among the gra.s.s...

Blackly, A hawk mounts, mounts in the inane Seeking the star-road, Seeking the end...

But there is no end.

Here, in this light, there is no end....

Elegy for an Enemy

(For G. H.)

Say, does that stupid earth Where they have laid her, Bind still her sullen mirth, Mirth which betrayed her?

Do the lush gra.s.ses hold, Greenly and glad, That brittle-perfect gold She alone had?

Smugly the common crew, Over their knitting, Mourn her -- as butchers do Sheep-throats they're slitting!

She was my enemy, One of the best of them.

Would she come back to me, G.o.d d.a.m.n the rest of them!

d.a.m.n them, the flabby, fat, Sleek little darlings!

We gave them t.i.t for tat, Snarlings for snarlings!

Squashy pomposities, Shocked at our violence, Let not one tactful hiss Break her new silence!

Maids of antiquity, Look well upon her; Ice was her chast.i.ty, Spotless her honor.

Neighbors, with b.r.e.a.s.t.s of snow, Dames of much virtue, How she could flame and glow!

Lord, how she hurt you!

She was a woman, and Tender -- at times!

(Delicate was her hand) One of her crimes!

Hair that strayed elfinly, Lips red as haws, You, with the ready lie, Was that the cause?

Rest you, my enemy, Slain without fault, Life smacks but tastelessly Lacking your salt!

Stuck in a bog whence naught May catapult me, Come from the grave, long-sought, Come and insult me!

WE knew that sugared stuff Poisoned the other; Rough as the wind is rough, Sister and brother!

Breathing the ether clear Others forlorn have found -- Oh, for that peace austere She and her scorn have found!

Biographical Note:

Stephen Vincent Bene't (22 July 1898 - 13 March 1943) was from a family with roots in Florida, which explains the Spanish name. Although born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, his father was a colonel in the U.S. Army, and hence he grew up in California and Georgia. He attended Yale starting in 1915 and that same year published his first book of poems, 'Five Men and Pompey'. 'Young Adventure' (1918) is considered his first mature book of poetry, and he went on to win two Pulitzer Prizes, in 1929 for 'John Brown's Body' and in 1944 for 'Western Star'.

It appears that the whole family had great talents, as his grandfather was a Brigadier General, his father a Colonel, and both Stephen and his brother William Rose Benet won Pulitzer Prizes for poetry.