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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