I can only give myself, Into Your Hands, Your Hands. THE BIRTH OF LUCIFER Helpless is God in struggling with that star After nine hours of night the sun, expiring, This transience, making us both Gods and men: Life seeks again its dark and secret places, Where under the sunset's leveled sword, it keeps Its rest until rekindled in new faces, Old worlds awake from their too dreamless sleep. A NEW HEAVEN We have our hopes and fears that flout us, We have our illusions, changeless through the years; We have our dreams of rest after long struggle, After our toil is finished, folded hands. But for those who have fallen in battle, Heaven is full of those who can remember The ebbing-out of life that slowly lingered Heaven is full of those who dropped their burden But these the War has taken Remember naught but their own exultant youth How will these enter in Our old dull Heaven? Where we seek only to drowse at ease, unthinking, Safe? For these souls who faced a thousand dangers, And found sly Death that robbed them of their chance, Safe-can a Heaven which is safe and painless, Somewhere amid the clouds there is the home of thunder; It is a ball, a heavy plaything. They may kick hither and thither with their feet. Lightning is but a toy-the flaming stars Are endless camp-fire lights; And for the silence of eternity, They too on out-post duty, often heard it speak. We have the dreams of our fat lives that lead us To waste our lives; We have the false hope we are serving others When it is but ourselves we serve; Yet these who have never lived, and whose sole service Was but to die too soon, Perhaps somewhere are making a new Heaven Filled with the divine despair and joy this dead earth never knew. Looks over all; Unless you wish to rouse The dead. They will be ready when you call. Look on you long without the least surprise. About their own affairs; Why should you trouble these, so long bereft Let the pale pillars still untroubled rear Against the pediment. Let windows mouse Gnaw the old trunks in the dark attic stored. William Rose Benét Liam rose benet was born at Fort Hamilton, New York Harbor, February 2, W 1886. He was educated at Albany Academy and graduated from Yale in 1907. After various experiences as freelance writer, publisher's reader, magazine editor, and second lieutenant in the U. S. Air Service, Benét became Associate Editor of the New York Post's Literary Review in 1920. He resigned in 1924 to become one of the founders and editors of The Saturday Review of Literature. The outstanding feature of Benét's verse is its extraordinary versatility; an Oriental imagination runs through his pages. Like the title-poem of his first volume, Merchants from Cathay (1913), Benét's volumes vibrate with a vigorous music; they are full of the sonorous stuff that one rolls out crossing wintry fields or tramping a road alone. But Benét's charm is not confined to the lift and swing of rollicking choruses. The Falconer of God (1914), The Great White Wall (1916) and The Burglar of the Zodiac (1918) contain decorations bold as they are brilliant; they ring with a strange and spicy music evoked from seemingly casual words. His scope is wide, although he is most at home in fancies which glow with a half-lurid, halfhumorous reflection of the grotesque. There are times indeed when Benét seems to be forcing his ingenuity. The poet frequently lets his fantastic Pegasus run away with him, and what started out to be a gallop among the stars ends in a scraping of shins on the pavement. But he is saved by an acrobatic dexterity even when his energy betrays him. Perpetual Light (1919), a memorial to his first wife, is, naturally, a more subdued collection. Moons of Grandeur (1920) represents an appreciable development of Benét's whimsical gift; a combination of Eastern phantasy and Western vigor. Even more arresting are those poems which appeared subsequent to this volume. A firmer line, a cooler condensation may be found in Man Possessed (1927), a selection of the best of the previous volumes with many new poems. "Whale" is a particularly brilliant example; "The Horse Thief" is one of the most fanciful and one of the most popular of American ballads; "Jesse James" rocks with high spirits and the true balladist's gusto; "Inscription for a Mirror in a Deserted Dwelling," written during the` life of his second wife, Elinor Wylie, reflects the poet who wrote it and the poet to whom it was written, while "Sagacity" is a tribute to her memory. Golden Fleece (1935) is a more critical selection of Benét's poems with the addition of several new verses, many of them in an unexpectedly light vein. Besides his verse, the older Benét is the author of two novels and several tales for children, the editor (with Henry Seidel Canby and John Drinkwater) of Twentieth Century Poetry (1929), and Fifty Poets (1932), an "auto-anthology" in which fifty American poets chose their own best, or favorite, poems. The Dust Which Is God (1941) is a portrait in which the autobiographical element is lightly disguised. How that Of their And their MERCHANTS FROM CATHAY Their heels slapped their bumping mules; their fat chaps glowed. Like sunset their robes were on the wide, white road: So we saw those mad merchants come dusting into town! Two paunchy beasts they rode on and two they drove before. They bawled in their beards, and their turbans they wried. And a stave they sat singing, to tell us of the matter. With its And Chorus. A first Stave Fearsome, And a second Right hard To stomach And a third, We gape to Hear them end, And are in And dread it is Devil's Work! "For your silks, to Sugarmago! For your dyes, to Isfahan! But for magic merchandise, For treasure-trove and spice, Here's a catch and a carol to the great, grand Chan, "Here's a catch and a carol to the great, grand Chan; "Red-as-blood skins of panthers, so bright against the sun And with conduits of beverage those floors run wet. "His wives stiff with riches, they sit before him there. Make fall eclipse and thunder—make moons and suns appear! "Once the Chan, by his enemies sore-prest, and sorely spent, Lay, so they say, in a thicket 'neath a tree Where the howl of an owl vexed his foes from their intent: "A catch and a carol to the great, grand Chan! And crowns he gave us! We end where we began; Those mad, antic Merchants! . . . Their stripèd beasts did beat And some say the Chan himself in anger dealt the stroke- But Holy, Blessed Mary, preserve us as you may Lest once more those mad Merchants come chanting from Cathay! NIGHT Let the night keep Let day discover not All the night cost! Let the night keep Love's burning bliss, |