James Berry Bensel (1856-1886)
"A native of New York city, he was a student in Lynn,
Mass., a clerk in Boston, and, following his literary bent, an author and public
reader. His life is the pathetic and too familiar story of suffering and
unfulfilled promise. He published a volume of poems, In the King's Garden.
(D. Lothrop & Co.)" (Crandall)
From In the King's Garden (1885)
A Portrait
In the white sweetness of her dimpled chin
The pink points of her perfumed fingers press,
And 'round her tremulous mouth's loveliness
The tears and smiles a sudden strife begin:
First one and then the other seems to win:
And o'er her drooping eyes a golden tress
Falls down to hide what else they might confess
Their blue-veined lids are striving to shut in.
The yellow pearls that bind her throat about
With her pale bosom's throbbing rise or fall:
The while her thoughts like carrier-doves have fled
To that far land where armies clash and shout,
And where, beyond love's reach, a soldier tall
With staring eyes and broken sword lies dead.
(Text from American Sonnets)
