The Project Gutenberg EBook of Young Adventure, by Stephen Vincent Benet

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Title: Young Adventure
A Book of Poems

Author: Stephen Vincent Benet

Posting Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #312]
Release Date: August, 1995

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOUNG ADVENTURE ***

Produced by A. Light, and L. Bowser

YOUNG ADVENTURE

A Book of Poems by

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.]

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 reb