American poet (1898-1943)
Like a clear brook most full of light,
Or olives swaying on a height,
So silver they have wings, almost;
Like a great word once known and lost
And meaning all things.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
"The Quality of Courage", Young Adventure
A moment's glance of fire, of fire,
Spiring, leaping, flaming higher,
Into the intense, the cloudless blue,
Until two souls were one, and flame,
And very flesh, and yet the same!
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
"The Quality of Courage", Young Adventure
These I see,
Blazing through all eternity,
A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree!
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
"The Quality of Courage", Young Adventure
Go play with the towns you have built of blocks, The towns where you would have bound me! I sleep in my earth like a tired fox, And my buffalo have found me.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
The Ballad of William Sycamore
He was telling the story and the failures and the endless journey of mankind. They got tricked and trapped and bamboozled, but it was a great journey. And no demon that was ever foaled could know the inwardness of it -- it took a man to do that.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
The Devil and Daniel Webster
The girls
Have the brief-blooming, rhododendron-youth
Of pioneer women, and the black-toothed age.
And if you yearn to meet your pioneers,
You'll find them there, the same men, inbred sons
Of inbred sires perhaps, but still the same;
A pioneer-island in a world that has
No use for pioneers--the unsplit rock
Of Fundamentalism, calomel,
Clan-virtues, clannish vices, fiddle-tunes
And a harsh God.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
John Brown's Body
Of all the Christbitten places in the two hemispheres, [Los Angeles] is the last curly kink in the pig's tail.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
attributed, Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion
Grant us victory over the tyrants who would enslave all free men and nations. Grant us faith and understanding to cherish all those who fight for freedom as if they were our brothers. Grant us brotherhood in hope and union, not only for the space of this bitter war, but for the days to come which shall and must unite all the children of earth.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
prayer written for the United Nations Flag Day broadcast of Toward the Century of the Common Man on the NBC radio network, June 14, 1942
For the women who mourn their dead in the secret night,
For the children taught to keep quiet, the old children,
The children spat-on at school.
For the wrecked laboratory,
The gutted house, the dunged picture, the pissed-in well
The naked corpse of Knowledge flung in the square
And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
"Litany for Dictatorships", Young Adventure
He brooded a moment. It wasn't slavery,
That stale red-herring of Yankee knavery
Nor even states-rights, at least not solely,
But something so dim that it must be holy.
A voice, a fragrance, a taste of wine,
A face half-seen in old candleshine,
A yellow river, a blowing dust,
Something beyond you that you must trust,
Something so shrouded it must be great,
The dead men building the living State
From 'simmon-seed on a sandy bottom,
The woman South in her rivers laving
That body whiter than new-blown cotton
And savage and sweet as wild-orange-blossom,
The dark hair streams on the barbarous bosom,
If there ever has been a land worth saving--
In Dixie land, I'll take my stand,
And live and die for Dixie!
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
John Brown's Body
She is all peace, all quiet,
All passionate desires, the eloquent thunder
Of new, glad suns, shouting aloud for joy
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
"The Lover in Hell", Young Adventure
Americans are always moving on.
It's an old Spanish custom gone astray,
A sort of English fever, I believe,
Or just a mere desire to take French leave,
I couldn't say. I couldn't really say.
But, when the whistle blows, they go away.
Sometimes there never was a whistle blown,
But they don't care, for they can blow their own
Whistles of willow-stick and rabbit-bone,
Quail-calling through the rain
A dozen tunes but only one refrain,
"We don't know where we're going, but we're on our way!"
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
prelude, Western Star
If the hunters think we do all things by chants and spells, they may believe so -- it does not hurt them.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
By the Waters of Babylon
Ah, God,
I trod them down where I have trod,
And they remain, and they remain,
Etched in unutterable pain,
Loved lips and faces now apart,
That once were closer than my heart--
In agony, in agony,
And horribly a part of me....
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
"The Quality of Courage", Young Adventure
Floating downward, very clear, still the echoes reach the ear
Of a little tune he whistles and a little song he sings,
Mounting, mounting still, triumphant, on his torn and broken wings!
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
"Winged Man", Young Adventure
Something begins, begins;
Starlit and sunlit, something walks abroad
In flesh and spirit and fire.
Something is loosed to change the shaken world.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
A Child is Born
A soul. A soul is nothing. Can you see it, smell it, touch it? No.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
"The Devil and Daniel Webster"
The map is what we know
And it means nothing. I've seen many maps,
Talked to a thousand seamen, in my time,
And, in the end, there is but this to say,
One ventures as one ventures.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Western Star
No--no other man is cursed
With such doubleness of eye,
They can hunger, they can thirst,
But they know for what and why.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
John Brown's Body
God pity us indeed, for we are human,
And do not always see
The vision when it comes, the shining change,
Or, if we see it, do not follow it,
Because it is too hard, too strange, too new,
Too unbelievable, too difficult,
Warring too much with common, easy ways.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
A Child is Born