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Young Adventure | 上传时间:2007-07-11 / 点击:


 Portrait of a Boy
       
       
       
        After the whipping he crawled into bed,
        Accepting the harsh fact with no great weeping.
        How funny uncle's hat had looked striped red!
        He chuckled silently.  The moon came, sweeping
        A black, frayed rag of tattered cloud before
        In scorning; very pure and pale she seemed,
        Flooding his bed with radiance.  On the floor
        Fat motes danced.  He sobbed, closed his eyes and dreamed.
       
        Warm sand flowed round him.  Blurts of crimson light
        Splashed the white grains like blood.  Past the cave's mouth
        Shone with a large, fierce splendor, wildly bright,
        The crooked constellations of the South;
        Here the Cross swung; and there, affronting Mars,
        The Centaur stormed aside a froth of stars.
        Within, great casks, like wattled aldermen,
        Sighed of enormous feasts, and cloth of gold
        Glowed on the walls like hot desire.  Again,
        Beside webbed purples from some galleon's hold,
        A black chest bore the skull and bones in white
        Above a scrawled "Gunpowder!"  By the flames,
        Decked out in crimson, gemmed with syenite,
        Hailing their fellows with outrageous names,
        The pirates sat and diced.  Their eyes were moons.
        "Doubloons!" they said.  The words crashed gold.  "Doubloons!"
       
       
       
       
        Portrait of a Baby
       
       
       
        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,
        Perspectiveless and shadowy.
        A bulging world that had no walls,
        A flowing world, most like the sea,
        Compassing all infinity
        Within a shapeless, ebbing room,
        An endless tide that swells and falls . . .
        He slept and woke and slept again.
        As a veil drops Time dropped away;
        Space grew a toy for children's play,
        Sleep bolted fast the gates of Sense --
        He lay in naked impotence;
        Like a drenched moth that creeps and crawls
        Heavily up brown, light-baked walls,
        To fall in wreck, her task undone,
        Yet somehow striving toward the sun.
        So, as he slept, his hands clenched tighter,
        Shut in the old way of the fighter,
        His feet curled up to grip the ground,
        His muscles tautened for a bound;
        And though he felt, and felt alone,
        Strange brightness stirred him to the bone,
        Cravings to rise -- till deeper sleep
        Buried the hope, the call, the leap;
        A wind puffed out his mind's faint spark.
        He was absorbed into the dark.
        He woke again and felt a surge
        Within him, a mysterious urge
        That grew one hungry flame of passion;
        The whole world altered shape and fashion.
        Deceived, befooled, bereft and torn,
        He scourged the heavens with his scorn,
        Lifting a bitter voice to cry
        Against the eternal treachery --
        Till, suddenly, he found the breast,
        And ceased, and all things were at rest,
        The earth grew one warm languid sea
        And he a wave.  Joy, tingling, crept
        Throughout him.  He was quenched and slept.
       
        So, while the moon made broad her ring,
        He slept and cried and was a king.
        So, worthily, he acted o'er
        The endless miracle once more.
        Facing immense adventures daily,
        He strove still onward, weeping, gaily,
        Conquered or fled from them, but grew
        As soil-starved, rough pine-saplings do.
        Till, one day, crawling seemed suspect.
        He gripped the air and stood erect
        And splendid.  With immortal rage
        He entered on man's heritage!
       
       
       
       
        The General Public
       
        "Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?"  -- Browning.
       
       
       
        "Shelley?  Oh, yes, I saw him often then,"
        The old man said.  A dry smile creased his face
        With many wrinkles.  "That's a great poem, now!
        That one of Browning's!  Shelley?  Shelley plain?
        The time that I remember best is this --
       
        A thin mire crept along the rutted ways,
        And all the trees were harried by cold rain
        That drove a moment fiercely and then ceased,
        Falling so slow it hung like a grey mist
        Over the school.  The walks were like blurred glass.
        The buildings reeked with vapor, black and harsh
        Against the deepening darkness of the sky;
        And each lamp was a hazy yellow moon,
        Filling the space about with golden motes,
        And making all things larger than they were.
        One yellow halo hung above a door,
        That gave on a black passage.  Round about
        Struggled a howling crowd of boys, pell-mell,
        Pushing and jostling like a stormy sea,
        With shouting faces, turned a pasty white
        By the strange light, for foam.  They all had clods,
        Or slimy balls of mud.  A few gripped stones.
        And there, his back against the battered door,
        His pile of books scattered about his feet,
        Stood Shelley while two others held him fast,
        And the clods beat upon him.  `Shelley!  Shelley!'
        The high shouts rang through all the corridors,
        `Shelley!  Mad Shelley!  Come along and help!'
        And all the crowd dug madly at the earth,
        Scratching and clawing at the streaming mud,
        And fouled each other and themselves.  And still
        Shelley stood up.  His eyes were like a flame
        Set in some white, still room; for all his face
        Was white, a whiteness like no human color,
        But white and dreadful as consuming fire.
        His hands shook now and then, like slender cords
        Which bear too heavy weights.  He did not speak.
        So I saw Shelley plain."
                                  "And you?" I said.
       
        "I?  I threw straighter than the most of them,
        And had firm clods.  I hit him -- well, at least
        Thrice in the face.  He made good sport that night."
       
       
       
       
        Road and Hills
       
       
       
        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 pass 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 spaces,
        Are like the spaces
        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, noble, 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 grass 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 grass . . .
       
        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 grasses 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,
        God damn the rest of them!
       
        Damn them, the flabby, fat,
        Sleek little darlings!
        We gave them tit 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 chastity,
        Spotless her honor.
        Neighbors, with breasts 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.
       
       
       
       
       
        End