Explore "Portrait of a Boy" by Stephen Vincent Benet on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
After the whipping he crawled into bed, / Accepting the harsh fact with no great weeping.
How funny uncle's hat had looked striped red!
He chuckled silently. The moon came, sweeping / A black, frayed rag of tattered cloud before / In scorning; very pure and pale she seemed, / Flooding his bed with radiance. On the floor / Fat motes danced. He sobbed, closed his eyes and dreamed.
Warm sand flowed round him. Blurts of crimson light / Splashed the white grains like blood. Past the cave's mouth / Shone with a large, fierce splendor, wildly bright, / The crooked constellations of the South; / Here the Cross swung; and there, affronting Mars, / The Centaur stormed aside a froth of stars.
Within, great casks, like wattled aldermen, / Sighed of enormous feasts, and cloth of gold / Glowed on the walls like hot desire. Again, / Beside webbed purples from some galleon's hold, / A black chest bore the skull and bones in white / Above a scrawled "Gunpowder! " By the flames, / Decked out in crimson, gemmed with syenite, / Hailing their fellows with outrageous names, / The pirates sat and diced. Their eyes were moons.
"Doubloons! " they said. The words crashed gold. "Doubloons! "