Timidly Against a background of brick tenements Some trees spread their branches Skyward. They are thin and sapless, They are bent and weary— Tamed with captivity; And they huddle behind the fence Swaying helplessly before the wind, Forward and backward, Like a group of panicky deer Caught in a cage.
Tingling shafts of light, Like gigantic staffs Brandished by blind, invisible hands, Cross and recross each other in the sky,
Frantically— Groping among the stars—stubbing themselves against the bloated clouds— Tapping desperately for a sure foothold In the fluctuating mists.
Calm-eyed and inaccessible. The stars peer through the blue fissures of the sky, Unperturbed among the panic of scurrying beams; Twinkling with a cold, acrid merriment.
An infinite weariness comes into the faces of the old tenements, As they stand massed together on the block, Tall and thoughtfully silent, In the enveloping twilight. Pensively, They eye each other across the street, Through their dim windows— With a sad recognizing stare; Watching the red glow fading in the distance, At the end of the street, Behind the black church spires; Watching the vague sky lowering overhead, Purple with clouds of colored smoke; From the extinguished sunset; Watching the tired faces coming home from work— Like dry-breasted hags Welcoming their children to their withered arms.
Stephen Vincent Benét, the younger brother of William Rose Benét, was born at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in July, 1898. He was educated in various parts of the country, graduating from Yale in 1919.
At seventeen he published a small book containing six dramatic portraits, _Five Men and Pompey_ (1915), a remarkable set of monologues which, in spite of distinct traces of Browning and Alfred Noyes, was little short of astounding, coming from a schoolboy. In Benét’s next volume, _Young Adventure_ (1918), one hears something more than the speech of an infant prodigy; the precocious facility has developed into a keen and individual vigor.
_Heavens and Earth_ (1920), the most representative collection, has a greater imaginative sweep. Like his brother, the younger Benét is at his best in the decoratively grotesque; his fancy exults in running the scales between the whimsically bizarre and the lightly diabolic.