Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

HEAVENS AND EARTH
A BOOK OF POEMS

BY

STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1920

Copyright, 1920

BY

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

TO

GEORGE THEODORE ACHELIS

1897–1920

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Ainslie’s Magazine, The Bowling Green, Books and the Book World, The Dial, The New Republic, Romance, Sun, The Sun Dial, The Yale Review and The Yale Literary Magazine for permission to reprint poems included in this volume.

CONTENTS

TWO VISIONS OF HELEN

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.

Of august ether, formless as the cloud,

And light made absolute. The mountains sighed,

Turning in sleep. Dawn held the frozen flame

An instant high above the shaggy world,

Then, to the crowing of a thousand cocks,

Poured out on earth the unconquerable sun!

The centaurs awoke! they aroused from their beds of pine,

Their long flanks hoary with dew, and their eyes, deep-drowned

In the primal slumber of stones, stirred bright to the shine!

And they stamped with their hooves and their gallop abased the ground!

Swifter than arrowy birds in an eager sky, The

White-browed kings of the hills where old Titans feast, Running

—Cheiron ordered the charge with a neighing cry, of the

And the thousand hunters tramped like a single beast! Centaurs.

Beautiful monstrous dreams they seemed as they ran,

Trees come alive at the nod of a god grown mute!

Their eyes looked up to the sun like a valiant man;

Their bows clashed shrill on the loins and limbs of the brute!

Laughing, rejoicing, white as a naked birch,

Slim as a spear in a torrent of moving towers,

Itys, the prince, ran gay in the storm of their search,

Silverly shod on feet that outstripped the Hours!

Over by Sparta bays a horn!

Ohé, Helena!

Over by Sparta bays a horn!

And the black hound grins to his milk-teeth torn;

And the tall stag wishes he’d never been born!

Helena hunts on the hills!

Past the Eurotas the chase sweeps hot!

Ohé, Helena!

Past the Eurotas the chase sweeps hot!

And the pack has nosed at a royal slot!

And a white-armed girl has a magic lot!

Helena hunts on the hills!

Echoed at Elis the dogs give tongue!

Ohé, Helena!

Echoed at Elis the dogs give tongue!

The stag flees on but his mort is sung! The Hunting

And the world and Helen are very young! of

Helena hunts on the hills! Helen.

Down by Argos the flight is stayed!

Ohé, Helena!

Down by Argos the flight is stayed!

And proud blood stifles the reeking blade!

And they cut the tongue for the golden maid!

Helena hunts on the hills!

Over in Troy by a kingly door,

Ohé, Helena!

Over in Troy by a kingly door,

Hector’s sword is asleep from war!

“Wait!” whines the bitter steel, “Two years more!”

Helena hunts on the hills!

So the two molten clamors fused a space

As silver marries brass to make a bell,

Then thrust apart and vanished, save for some

Faint interlocking tentacles of sound

That chimed to Itys. Something halted him

From the swift gallop and the embracing air,

Put in him troubling languor, drove him out

To rest beside a round coin of a pool,

Casually flung among a cloud of pines.

He dreamed as a dog dreams, uneasily.

The dreams blow North and South.

Pitiless-bright they gleam.

Send, Zeus, a flower across my mouth!

The wing of a silver dream!

The visions smoke from the deep, Itys

Bannering East and West. Dreams

Guide, Zeus, the stumbling old feet of Sleep,

That bring a dream to my breast!

I have gazed in immaculate eyes!

My soul is a flame astream!

Zeus, strike swift from the raging skies,

That I may die with my dream!

He waked and saw two hounds, tugging their leash,

Burst through the covert, and heard laughter bell

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.

Tempest from the valiant sky,

Music of the shaken reed,

Can a thousand kisses buy

You and April, mine indeed?

Fling the dice and let them lie!

Not a joy from all your mind

Will you toss me, beggar’s dole,

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!

Vines 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;

Honey a wild bee clips. Helen’s

Robbers afraid of pardon, Song

The princes steal from their ships,

And pluck the fruit of iniquity

And take it not from their lips.

Fate grows in my garden;

Black as a cypress shoot.

Sleepily smiles the warden,

Guarding the gorgeous loot,

Seeing the Tree, Deliciousness,

And the tall lords dead at its root!

Their lips broke from the kiss. Helena sighed,

Then started up, afraid. Straight toward the pool

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.

After 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.

—The chase passed with hot noon, and in the cool

A straying centaur came, snuffed the new blood

And, seeing Itys dead, neighed in loud fear;

Calling the hairy tramplers of the woods

To mourn their friend with strange solemnities.

Close his eyes with the coins; bind his chin with the shroud;

Carry this clay along, in the time of the westing cloud;

Lay you the cakes beside, for the three-mouthed dog of Hell; Death-

Slain on the grass in fight, surely his end is well. Chant of The Centaurs

Love was the wind he sought, ignorant whence it went;

Now he has clasped it close, silent and eloquent;

Slow as the stream and strong, answering knee to knee,

Carry this clay along—it is more wise than we.

The chanting died away upon the hills,

Sobbingly low.

And Night reversed the urn; Night

Drawing all sunlight back to the hot deeps,

And leaving the high heavens full of stars.

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.

Measureless sand ... interminable sand....

The smooth hide of that yellow lion, Earth,

Ruffled a little and was dark again

Beneath the descending torrents of the night,

Plunging like cobalt from the cliffs of the sky,

Blotting the stiff wedge of each pyramid

With the slow gurgle of a rising wave,

A wave burning with stars....

The Sphinx alone

Couched on her forepaws like a sleepy hound

Under the weight of a caress of rock

And smiled her woman’s and chimera’s smile

Inexorably, drowned with the savage dark.

The black tide filled the heavens up and ceased,

A little tongueing flame ran on the sand

Bright as a fire of paper, swift and light

As a bird’s restless eyes. It rose. It bloomed,

An angry dream before the Sphinx’s feet,

The exhalation of a furious thought,

Tall as the ghosts of Heaven’s battlements,

The apparition that had once been Troy!

A girl went out in the summer skies,

(The dice lie white for the throwing!)

A girl went out in the summer skies

And the sunlight laughed as it kissed her eyes!

(And the wind of Fate is blowing!) Song of the City Troy

She was ruddy and gold as a changing leaf

When gilded Autumn gathers the sheaf.

She was lily and pale as a sleeping moth

When the full moon bleaches the skies like cloth.

The grass was glad to be under her shoe,

The poppy proud to be floor unto

The silvering dance of her feet like dew!

... But her lord walks chill as a cloud of snow

Where the kings of the earth are bending the bow.

They are roaring the fame of the flying dart,

But he whispers low, in a place apart,

With the evil ice of his freezing heart.

“Helena, Helena, mouth of wine,

Two more days for your sun to shine!

Helena, Helena, mouth of musk.

Two more days and I make you dusk.

Two more nights on your silky bed,

And your lover over it, bloody and dead,

And your body broken as I break bread!”

His lips are writhing, sucking and cold,

His hands are twitching like trees grown old,

He shivers as if he had trod on mold.

The Golden Queen at her anchor strains.

(Sails on the sapphire, snowing)

Paris walks on the deck like a man in chains.

(And the wind of Fate is blowing.)

He wastes in his love like leaves in a flame,

But his mind is a spear in a dauntless game,

And the face of his doom has a girl’s soft name.

The fifty sailors are whetting their swords.

The brown sun beats on the tarry boards.

And Helena skims by the rolling sand

And waves with the fleck of a foam-white hand.

And the blood of Youth pounds hot in the throat

As the long oars lash from the lunging boat.

Richly she came through the leaping green,

Like the shrine of a god, like a sun first seen,

And they cried “Hurrah for the Golden Queen!”

The white sails soar like a rising gull,

The water spins by the speeding hull.

She smiles with her chin cupped into her hand

At the drowning shadow of fading land

—And Paris shakes like a torching brand.

And Paris crushes her, breath to breath,

And she gives him her honey of love and death.

But chill Menelaus a Fury hath,

He has thawed his hate to a roaring wrath!

He is loosing his hounds on the ocean-path!

The blooms of the years are withered and fall.

(Dawn—and a red flame crowing)

And Time’s cracked fingers number them all.

(And the wind of Fate is blowing.)

And a wooden horse is trampling Troy

As a hoof-thrust crushes a crumpling toy.

Ruddy and gold where the torches stare

Helena sits in her carven chair.

Lovely and strange as a moonlit cloud—

But her head droops down like a petal bowed.

Beneath her the blood and the wine run deep

—But her eyes are seas more quiet than sleep.

The drunkards brawl and the cup goes round;

But she gives no sign and she makes no sound.

Red Menelaus has poured her drink;

And she does not sip and she does not shrink.

And her mouth is a flower that says “Depart!”

And the hilt of a knife is under her heart.

The kings of the world have finished their chase,

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.

They 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.

Waves in the dusk with a sound like tears

(And the deep tide foaming and flowing)

Saying one name for a thousand years!

(And the wind of Fate is blowing!)

Like air beaten by swords, like the long cry

Of an old trumpet harsh with rust and gold

The ballad rose assaulting, struck and died

Into a clamorous echo.

The Sphinx stirred,

Shaking the drifted moonlight from her coat

As a dog shakes water, rising mountainously;

Then from that drum of terrible stone, her throat,

Rolled back her answer at the enormous sky.

The arrow of Eros flies The Song

In the dark, in the trembling dark; of the

Piercing and sweet is the song it cries Sphinx