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_
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.