Nor skin nor hide nor fleece
Shall cover you,
Nor curtain of crimson nor fine
Shelter of cedar-wood be over you,
Nor the fir-tree
Nor the pine.
Nor sight of whin nor gorse
Nor river-yew,
Nor fragrance of flowering bush,
Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you.
Nor of linnet
Nor of thrush.
Nor word nor touch nor sight
Of lover, you
Shall long through the night but for this:
The roll of the full tide to cover you
Without question,
Without kiss.
_William Rose Benét_
William Rose Benét was born at Fort Hamilton, New York Harbor,
February 2, 1886. He was educated at Albany Academy and graduated
from Yale in 1907. After various experiences as free-lance writer,
publisher’s reader, magazine editor and second lieutenant in the U.
S. Air Service, Benét became the Associate Editor of the New York
Post’s _Literary Review_ in 1920.
The outstanding feature of Benét’s verse is its extraordinary
whimsicality; an oriental imagination riots through his pages. Like
the title-poem of his first volume, _Merchants from Cathay_ (1913),
all of Benét’s volumes vibrate with a vigorous music; they are full
of the sonorous stuff that one rolls out crossing wintry fields or
tramping a road alone.
But Benét’s charm is not confined to the lift and swing of
rollicking choruses. His _The Falconer of God_ (1914), _The Great
White Wall_ (1916) and _The Burglar of the Zodiac_ (1918) contain
decorations as bold as they are brilliant; they ring with a strange
and spicy music evoked from seemingly casual words; they glow with a
half-lurid, half-humorous reflection of the grotesque. There are
times when Benét seems to be forcing his ingenuity. The poet
frequently lets his fantastic Pegasus run away with him, and what
started out to be a gallop among the stars ends in a scraping of
shins on the pavement. But he is saved by an acrobatic dexterity
even when his energy betrays him.
_Moons of Grandeur_ (1920) represents the fullest development of
Benét’s unusual gifts; a combination of Eastern phantasy and Western
vigor.