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Stella Benson
Oh, bend your eyes, nor send your glance about.
Oh, watch your feet, nor stray beyond the kerb.
Oh, bind your heart lest it find secrets out.
For thus no punishment
Of magic shall disturb
Your very great content.
Oh, shut your lips to words that are forbidden.
Oh, throw away your sword, nor think to fight.
Seek not the best, the best is better hidden.
Thus need you have no fear,
No terrible delight
Shall cross your path, my dear.
Call no man foe, but never love a stranger.
Build up no plan, nor any star pursue.
Go forth with crowds; in loneliness is danger.
Thus nothing God can send,
after a little music
my thoughts differ
like pointing at a sword
or coming to France to protest
capable of great trust
no false parts ever hold
I go forth
in my coat and sword
to drums and other drums,
a vulgar audience
making ugly faces,
not knowing the wine
where I kill the clock
that talked on
about business.
Arm in arm
go my sword and pistol
and walk up and down
full of mischief
as if they are friends
or fearful to be alone.
Moonlight over
all the streets
made a great conquest of the city.
Strange to see it go
to the water with
drawn swords.
We met it like dead men,
not a word among us,
not able to stir
in the dirt.
At my new office, paid
to hate, I am full
of sword and torch.
Things against my going:
the rain, a great deal of paper,
the wind in the marsh. Oy.
I chose the saddest color
for a melancholy mother
and had a fear I should see
my house full of swords.
to peel an apple--
a store full of knives and swords!
ah, well--
You who loved all lovely things
And wrought in jewelled lines;
You have gone your gracious ways
That are patterned in dim stones
Of perfumed, faint-hued words;
You were a thing so feminine
That even of war you sang in tender notes,
But now another one has come,
Who is herself at war.
Her songs are keen and glittering,
For she has felt the magic fire
That you did long ago;
But now the fire has burned clean through
And forged a sword of steel.
Swinging swords are women's songs
That gleam as hard as diamonds do,
She rose to greet her guests with smiling eyes,
A wealth of rich experience in her face,
Her movements full of that unconscious grace
In which a woman's highest power lies;
One felt the heart beat true and tenderwise
Beneath the velvet folds and filmy lace,
Grim sorrow there had seemed to find no place,
But only peace and love in loveliest guise.
And as with ready wit and kindly mirth
She led the throng in repartee and jest,
To us she seemed as one from common earth,
With all its blighting pain, set far apart
And rounded in with peace — who could have guessed
A two-edged sword lay buried in her heart !
My song that was a sword is still.
Like a scabbard I have made
A covering with my will
To sheathe its blade.
It had a flashing tongue of steel
That made old shadows start;
It would not let the darkness heal
About my heart.
The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked,
And I was tarred and feathered,
For publishing this on the day the
Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:
“I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes
Standing on the steps of a marble temple.
Great multitudes passed in front of her,
Lifting their faces to her imploringly.
In her left hand she held a sword.
She was brandishing the sword,
Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer,
Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.
In her right hand she held a scale;
Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed
By those who dodged the strokes of the sword.
A man in a black gown read from a manuscript: