Sunt Leones

By Stevie Smith 1902–1971 Stevie Smith

The lions who ate the Christians on the sands of the arena

By indulging native appetites played what has now been seen a

Not entirely negligible part

In consolidating at the very start

The position of the Early Christian Church.

Initiatory rites are always bloody

And the lions, it appears

From contemporary art, made a study

Of dyeing Coliseum sands a ruddy

Liturgically sacrificial hue

And if the Christians felt a little blue—

Well people being eaten often do.

Theirs was the death, and theirs the crown undying,

A state of things which must be satisfying.

My point which up to this has been obscured

is that it was the lions who procured

By chewing up blood gristle flesh and bone

The martyrdoms on which the Church has grown.

I only write this poem because I thought it rather looked

As if the part the lions played was being overlooked.

By lions’ jaws great benefits and blessings were begotten

And so our debt to Lionhood must never be forgotten.

Source: The New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1988)

Biography

Calling Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning "the best collection of new poems to appear in 1957," Poetry contributor David Wright observed that "as one of the most original women poets now writing [Stevie Smith] seems to have missed most of the public accolades bestowed by critics and anthologists. One reason may be that not only does she belong to no 'school'—whether real or invented as they usually are—but her work is so . . .

Continue reading this biography