clew's reviews: a book log

Twenty, Stella Benson

TRUE PROMISES

[...]

  You promised friends and songs and festivals.
  You promised true. Our friends, who still are young,
  Assemble for their feasting in those halls
  Where speaks no human tongue.
  And thus our songs are sung.

Pretty sounds in mournful poems, precariously balanced between with-your-shield-or-on-it investment in the ?noble sorrow? of war, and a conviction that the war is just more of the usual (tragedy).

FIVE SMOOTH STONES

  [...]

  It was young David mocked the Philistine.
  It was young David laughed beside the river.
  There came his mother--his and yours and mine--
  With five smooth stones, and dropped them in his quiver.

  You never saw so green-and-gold a fairy.
  You never saw such very April eyes.
  She sang him sorrow's song to make him wary,
  She gave him five smooth stones to make him wise.

  _The first stone is love, and that shall fail you.
  The second stone is hate, and that shall fail you.
  The third stone is knowledge, and that shall fail you.
  The fourth stone is prayer, and that shall fail you.
  The fifth stone shall not fail you_.

[...]

(Five Smooth Stones has a reference to a crooked cross that confused me enormously until I remembered that she's writing in the First world war.)

Militant civilian can be taken either way. She's still a citizen of London:

THE NEWER ZION

  [...]

  I will repeat old inexpensive orgies;
  Drink nectar at the bun-shop in Shoreditch,
  Or call for Nut-Ambrosia at St. George's,
  And with a ghost-tip make the waitress rich.

  My soundless feet shall fly among the runners
  Through the red thunders of a Zeppelin raid,
  My still voice cheer the Anti-Aircraft gunners,
  The fires shall glare--but I shall cast no shade.

  And if a Shadow, wading in the torrent
  Of high excitement, snatch me from the riot--
  (Fool that he is)--and fumble with his warrant,
  And hail a hearse, and beg me to "Go quiet,"

  Mocking I'll go, and he shall be postillion,
  Until we reach the Keeper of the Door:
  "H'm ... Benson ... Stella ... militant civilian ...
  There's some mistake, we've had this soul before...."

  [...]

Project Gutenberg etext #12643, Twenty, Stella Benson