Stephen Vincent Benet

I am a shell. From me you shall not hear
The splendid tramplings of insistent drums,
The orbed gold of the viol’s voice that comes,
Heavy with radiance, languorous and clear.…

Tobacco smoke drifts up to the dim ceiling
From half a dozen pipes and cigarettes,
Curling in endless shapes, in blue rings wheeling,
As formless as our talk. Phil, drawling, bets…

The little letters dance across the page,
Flaunt and retire, and trick the tired eyes;
Sick of the strain, the glaring light, I rise
Yawning and stretching, full of empty rage…

(A Virginia Legend.) The Planting of the Hemp.
Captain Hawk scourged clean the seas (Black is the gap below the plank) From the Great North Bank to the Caribbees (Down by the marsh the hemp grows rank).
His fear was on the seaport…

And so, to you, who always were Perseus,
D'Artagnan,
Lancelot To me,
I give these weedy rhymes In memory of earlier times.

"The College will reopen Sept. —." `Catalogue'.
I was just aiming at the jagged hole Torn in the yellow sandbags of their trench,
When something threw me sideways with a wrench,
And the skies seemed to shrivel like a…

The night had fallen on the narrow tent.--Deep night of Virginia summer when the
Are burning wax in the near, languid
And the soft flowers hardly close all
But bathe in darkness, as a woman

The last pose flickered, failed.
The screen's dead white Glared in a sudden flooding of harsh light Stabbing the eyes; and as I stumbled out The curtain rose.
A fat girl with a pout And legs like hams, began to sing "His…

My friend went to the piano; spun the stool A little higher; left his pipe to cool;
Picked up a fat green volume from the chest;
And propped it open.
Whitely without rest

The grey gulls drift across the bay Softly and still as flakes of snow Against the thinning fog.
All day I sat and watched them come and go;
And now at last the sun was set,
Filling the waves with colored fire Till each seemed like…

He lay within a warm, soft world Of motion.
Colors bloomed and fled,
Maroon and turquoise, saffron, red,
Wave upon wave that broke and whirled To vanish in the grey-green gloom

David sang to his hook-nosed harp:"The Lord God is a jealous God!
His violent vengeance is swift and sharp!
And the Lord is King above all gods!"Blest be the Lord, through years untold,
The Lord Who has blessed me a…

All night they marched, the infantrymen under pack,
But the hands gripping the rifles were naked
And the hollow pits of the eyes stared, vacant and black,
When the moonlight shone.

For all those beaten, for the broken heads,
The fosterless, the simple, the oppressed,
The ghosts in the burning city of our time ...
For those taken in rapid cars to the house and

Well,
I was tired of life; the silly folk,
The tiresome noises, all the common things I loved once, crushed me with an iron yoke.
I longed for the cool quiet and the dark

(France — Ancient Regime.) I.
Go away!
Go away;
I will not confess to you!

OM Belton Castle to Solway side,
Hard by the bridge, is three days' ride."   We had fled full fast from her father's keep,
And the time was come that we must sleep.   The first day was an ecstasy,
A golden mist, a burgeoning tree;

(For G.
H.) Say, does that stupid earth Where they have laid her,
Bind still her sullen mirth,
Mirth which betrayed her?

Here, where men's eyes were empty and as bright As the blank windows set in glaring brick,
When the wind strengthens from the sea — and night Drops like a fog and makes the breath come thick;
By the deserted paths, the vacant…

There is darkness behind the light — and the pale light drips Cold on vague shapes and figures, that, half-seen loom Like the carven prows of proud, far-triumphing ships — And the firelight wavers and changes about the room,
As the three…

I flung my soul to the air like a falcon flying. I said, “Wait on, wait on, while I ride below!
I shall start a heron soon
In the marsh beneath the moon— A strange white heron rising with silver on its wings,
Rising and…

My father, he was a mountaineer,
His fist was a knotty hammer;
He was quick on his feet as a running deer,
And he spoke with a Yankee stammer.

The boat ploughed on.
Now Alcatraz was past And all the grey waves flamed to red again At the dead sun's last glimmer.
Far and vast The Sausalito lights burned suddenly In little dots and clumps, as if a pen Had scrawled vague lines of…

The moon, a sweeping scimitar, dipped in the stormy straits,
The dawn, a crimson cataract, burst through the eastern gates,
The cliffs were robed in scarlet, the sands were cinnabar,
Where first two men spread wings for flight and…