Stephen Vincent Benét

“ CONTENTS
1 TWO VISIONS OF HELEN
3 THE FIRST VISION OF HELEN Argument—Itys, nurtured by centaurs, meets and falls in love with Helen of Troy, before her marriage with Menelaus. What befell therefrom.
Slowly blanch-handed Dawn, eyes half-awake,
Upraised magnificent the silver urn,
Heaped with white roses at the trembling lip,
Flowers that burn with crystalline accord
And die not ever. Like a pulsing heart
Beat from within against the fire-loud verge
A milky vast transparency of light
Heavy with drowning stars; a swimming void Morning. ”

“ The throb of the engine’s heart erase our tiptoeing words,
And the slow mysterious mouth of the water against the side.
If you dripped your fingers awave, wet star-dust clung to the skin,
Spangling the wax-cool hand with the pollen and seeds of dawn,
And the wake, like a fish of fire, went twisting alive within
The willow-dark cage of green, and in splinters of foam was gone. ”

“ Like the milk-white body of Truth asleep in her naked hair,
And the blood and strength of the Earth arose to our dazzling eyes!
Quiet, quiet and quiet, said the march of the wave beneath.
Oh, immaculate shone the mind while the lotos of silence grew!
And the sore heart heavy with youth was a clean blade straight in its sheath,
As we drank with a matchless dream in that chrism of salt and dew!
Death jams down on his spade in the bloom of our elvish orchard,
Even the root-curls crawl at the skeleton jokes he cracks;
Let’s make rhymes for a while, as our Youth goes out to be tortured! ”

“ The lips of courage, the eyes of truth, and the body of ecstasy, Eros, Lord!
Grant that their years like rocketing gems of a necklace snapped at the throat of a priest,
56Differ from each by the color and shape, but in ardor and excellence none are least!
Loose on them Trouble and Pain, swift leopards, to be taught and tamed by their crystal wills!
Fling to them mountains to overcome that their feet may be glad on the necks of the hills!
Every immortal must put on dust at a time all know or he is not God,
These shall take seizin of Death together, the dream shall break in the crumbling sod. ”

“ Like a clear stream as Helen followed them.
They drank, were quiet. Itys stood at gaze; Itys
Seeing in all things one miraculous face, Beholds
And how her tunic left one bright breast bare, Helen
And how she smoothed her hair back with one hand....
But very presently he was aware
That some one not himself possessed his voice
And used it now to talk with—babbling words
Foolish and laughable to that still Beauty. ”

“ There was no fear upon her face,
Although they slew her in that place.
The daggers rent and tore her breast
Like dogs that snarl above a kill,
Her proud face gazed above them still,
Seeking rest—Oh, seeking rest! ”

“ And the lost horns of the taxis cry hooting through the dusk.
Gray as rain in an autumn wood when the skies are pale with cloud
Are the light and the street and the faces where the elephant busses roll,
Dark motors shine like a seal’s wet skin, and they and their rich are proud,
But the walkers are dim and aimless on a dolorous way of the soul. ”

“ They dash their wine in the glorious face.
And Paris is dead in a sickly land;
And they wrench the rings from the plume-white hand.
13They dice for her rings and the game is sweet
And lean Menelaus is smiling sleet.
And the captains chuckle, counting their scars,
For the hosts of the earth have finished their wars
And Helen and Troy are cold as the stars. ”

“ And I must follow them out in the desolate face of the rain.
From the silken-furnitured halls, from the golden and pleasant places
To the lurching and crippled march that an idiot voice proclaims!
To Man’s face suddenly made from a million poor men’s faces! ”

“ But they shall inherit the resurrection, when Death has unloosened his strangling cord!
Since they have endured they shall see your face where there is but Eternity, Eros, Lord!”
Therefore, Muse of the motley garments, indolent thief of obscure Romance,
Puff your cheeks to your penny whistle! fillip the feet of the flying dance!
Blow out your soul in a torrent of music—even the trees are like lamps ablaze!
This is the song of the red-leaf wedding that ended the jack-o’-lantern days!
57 EXPRESSIONS NEAR THE END OF WINTER
If I but had my longing! ”

“ Shaking down gold from the tattered leafiness, waving his torch till the sky’s aflare,
Stars that sparkle like steel in a swordhilt burn the black water of night’s lagoons,
Out in the frost-rimed waste of the corn-field are yellow pumpkins bigger than moons! ”

“ And I sweat at the walkers crushed by machining, implacable hours,
And in torment I turn away—but their march is over my heart.
They are helpless as drifting weed, they are stung with insane impatience
43At themselves and their lords and their hunger no toil can feed till it sleeps.
They are racked earth hating the plow, they are dung at the roots of the nations,
They are wheat that will not be bread and burns at the scythe that reaps. ”

“ They are all hiding the dead away, they are huddling them off to forget....
—I would rather scoop a hole in the sand till my hands ran blood and sweat,
I would rather raise my friend on a pyre for the lightning to do its will,
I would sooner leave my dead to the dogs—they are happy over their kill—
Than to bring them here to this oily place to lie like a numbered sheaf! ”

“ We are gods whose eyes are Wisdom, and Olympus is our mock.
Drowse into your Paradise! I say above the clock
“White—red—white—red—white!”
48 HYMN IN COLUMBUS CIRCLE
(After Seeing a Certain Window Display)
Man in his secret shrine
Hallows a wealth of gods,
Black little basalt Baals
Wood-kings heard in the pine,
Josses whose jade prevails
Breaking Disaster’s rods;
Prayers have made each one shine.
Man’s is a pious race.
Once he knelt to the moss,
Ra, Astarte or Jove,
Deities great and base,
—Once his questionings clove
To the stubborn arms of the Cross
That smote all lies in the face. ”

“ And you never would be kind Itys’
Though I kissed your very soul! Song
Race the coursers up the wind!
Queen of desperate alarms,
Though Destruction be the priest
That must bring me to your arms,
He shall wed our bones at least!
Life was vintage, borage-crowned,
Pour the cup upon the ground!
7Vines grow in my garden;
Blossoms a snake in size.
Sun warms and knife-winds harden,
Till the silk-stained globes arise;
And men peer over the hedges
With fury come in their eyes.
Pears grow in my garden ”

“ Apples swinging on a tree,
They band like a ring round that tall stone thumb,
They ladder up its sides like the spillings of a plum,
I must climb and pick them all ere our double kingdom come
Where the motors roar like sea. ”

“ The octopus-crowd comes rolling out, his tentacles crawl for meat.
He snuffles his way by restaurants where lily-voiced women feast,
He pokes his muzzle through white-tiled caves, and gulps like a hungry beast,
He roots into subterranean holes, he sweeps hell’s tables bare,
His suckers settle and fix and drink like wasps on a bursting pear. ”

“ Are puffed and bulged like bottle-’scaped Afreets!
—There are no definitions. All is dim.
A yellowy underworld, where trolleys swim
Enormous as a magic, and the least
Rice-powdered shop-girl, like a vesting priest
Assumes estranged beauty, cloudy-far,
Desirous as a water-mirrored star.
—The houses are cartoons—So is his wife—
He thinks “Grotesque” would be the word for Life. ”

“ Inside my heart. Three hours till God comes true,
When there’s no earth or sky or time in clocks
But only hell and paradise and you.
Life bows his strings! I shout the amazing tune!
... The dullest member drops his coffee spoon.
77 THE KNOCKOUT
The bell clanged “Time!” again. The boxers sparred,
Creep-footed, tiger-muscled, cautious-eyed,
Love the bright pugilist with his glance enskied,
Fate swart as rock, indomitably hard. ”

“ He quickened the wraith with fire till the life cried out aloud,
17He called Desire from his lightning, Despair from her weaving old,
And they fashioned the shape to a woman that men might die to behold!
Golden Zeus of the sunbeam slapped his hand on his thigh The Last
As the swords ran out of their scabbards and the arrows sang in the sky, Song of the
And the woman like leafy April was the chant that an archer sings Sphinx
Over sands grown bloody with purple that has come from the hearts of kings! ”

“ And the waterflow sound of the feeding brute as he pads by the cooking-fires,
His body shoulders the canyoned streets, his gluttonous mouths expand
And he laps the fat and flesh of the earth as a cat laps milk from a hand.
Slowly the greedy claws curl back, the feelers recoil and close,
The flood is setting the other way with the avalanche pound of snows,
Heavy and hot as a sated bee, enormous, slower than oil,
The beast comes shuffling to lair again, his lips still wet with his spoil.
42 THE WALKERS
(Strike Pickets—Lower Fifth Ave.) ”

“ Rending the brake with hounds, shouting aloud,
Crashed like a cast spear the returning chase. The Death
“Itys!” she said, “My brothers. They will kill.” of Itys
He looked down at his hands that held no sword.
Helena’s hounds belled answer to their pack.
Swift as a closing hand, unreal as dream,
Danger shut down around them.
“Dear” he said.
Pollux, the shining-speared, burst through the leaves.
8After the slaying, wide-eyed Helen paused
To clasp the dead hands loosely, and unhook
A swaying torque of gold from the white neck
That it might burn, a sun, between her breasts. ”

“ Drawing all sunlight back to the hot deeps,
And leaving the high heavens full of stars.
9 THE LAST VISION OF HELEN Argument—Helen, after the fall of Troy, departs to Egypt with ghostly companions, as in the old tale. She encounters the Sphinx and a marvel is wrought upon her. ”