Young Adventure | Page 3

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Young Adventure by Stephen Vincent Benet
[Stephen Vincent Bene't, American Poet and short-story writer -- 1898-1943.]

[Note on text: Italicized stanzas will be indented 5 spaces. Italicized words or phrases have been capitalized. Lines longer than 77 characters have been broken, and the continuation is indented two spaces.]
[Note: This etext was transcribed from the 1918 American (original) edition. There are some slight differences, such as making the titles in the contents conform exactly to the titles of the individual sections, for ease of searching, and correction of mistakes which are very obviously mistakes, and not merely archaic or unorthodox usage, but great care has been taken not to change the text, and hopefully this has been accomplished.]

Young Adventure
A Book of Poems by
Stephen Vincent Benet

Some of these poems were originally printed in various periodicals.

To W. R. B.
Dedication

And so, to you, who always were Perseus, D'Artagnan, Lancelot To me, I give these weedy rhymes In memory of earlier times. Now all those careless days are not. Of all my heroes, you endure.
Words are such silly things! too rough, Too smooth, they boil up or congeal, And neither of us likes emotion -- But I can't measure my devotion! And you know how I really feel -- And we're together. There, enough, . . . !

Foreword by Chauncey Brewster Tinker

In these days when the old civilisation is crumbling beneath our feet, the thought of poetry crosses the mind like the dear memory of things that have long since passed away. In our passionate desire for the new era, it is difficult to refrain oneself from the commonplace practice of speculating on the effects of warfare and of prophesying all manner of novel rebirths. But it may be well for us to remember that the era which has recently closed was itself marked by a mad idealisation of all novelties. In the literary movements of the last decade -- when, indeed, any movement at all has been perceptible -- we have witnessed a bewildering rise and fall of methods and ideals. We were captivated for a time by the quest of the golden phrase and the accompanying cultivation of exotic emotions; and then, wearying of the pretty and the temperamental, we plunged into the bloodshot brutalities of naturalism. From the smooth-flowing imitations of Tennyson and Swinburne, we passed into a false freedom that had at its heart a repudiation of all law and standards, for a parallel to which one turns instinctively to certain recent developments in the political world. We may hope that the eager search for novelty of form and subject may have its influence in releasing us from our old bondage to the commonplace and in broadening the scope of poetry; but we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that it has at the same time completed that estrangement between the poet and the general public which has been developing for half a century. The great mass of the reading world, to whom the arts should minister, have now forgotten that poetry is a consolation in times of doubt and peril, a beacon, and "an ever-fixed mark" in a crazed and shifting world. Our poetry -- and I am speaking in particular of American poetry -- has been centrifugal; our poets have broken up into smaller and ever smaller groups. Individualism has triumphed.
To the general confusion, critics, if they may be said to have existed at all, have added by their paltry conception of the art. They have deemed it a sufficient denunciation of a poet to accuse him of imitating his masters; as though the history of an art were rather a series of violent rebellions than a growth and a progressive illumination. Not all generations are privileged to see the working of a great creative impulse, but the want, keen though it be, furnishes no reason for the utter rejection of A tremulous murmur from great days long dead. But this fear of echoing the past may work us a yet greater misfortune. In the rejection of the manner of an earlier epoch may be implicit also the rejection of the very sources from which springs the life of the fair art. Melody, and a love of the green earth, and a yearning for God are of the very fabric of poetry, deny it who will. The Muses still reign on Parnassus, wax the heathen never so furious. Poets who love poetry better than their own fame in Grub Street will do well to remember The flame, the noble pageant of our life; The burning seal that stamps man's high indenture To vain attempt and most forlorn adventure; Romance and purple seas, and toppling towns, And the wind's valiance crying o'er the downs.
It is a poor business to find in such words only the illusions of youth and