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Title: The golden whales of California and other rhymes in the American language
Author: Lindsay, Vachel
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The golden whales of California and other rhymes in the American language" ***
CALIFORNIA AND OTHER RHYMES IN THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE ***
THE GOLDEN WHALES
OF CALIFORNIA
AND OTHER RHYMES IN THE
AMERICAN LANGUAGE
LIST OF THE BOOKS OF VACHEL LINDSAY
_Prose_:
A Handy Guide for Beggars
Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty
The Art of the Moving Picture
_Verse_:
General William Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems
The Congo and Other Poems
The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems
The Golden Whales of California and Other Rhymes in the
American Language
It is suggested that those who are interested in a complete view of
these works should take them in the above order. They are all published
by The Macmillan Company.
THE GOLDEN WHALES
OF CALIFORNIA
AND OTHER RHYMES IN THE
AMERICAN LANGUAGE
BY
VACHEL LINDSAY
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1920
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1920.
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
TO
ISADORA BENNETT,
CITIZEN OF SPRINGFIELD,
because she helped me to write many of
the pieces, from the Golden Whales
of California to Alexander Campbell,
and because she danced
the Daniel Jazz.
For permission to reprint some of the verses in this volume the author
is indebted to the courtesy of the editors and publishers of _The
Chicago Daily News_, _Poetry_ (Chicago), _Contemporary Verse_, _The New
Republic_, _The Forum_, Books and the Book World of the _New York Sun_,
_Others_, _The Red Cross Magazine_, _Youth_, _The Independent_, and
William Stanley Braithwaite’s anthology entitled “Victory.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
A WORD ON CALIFORNIA, PHOTOPLAYS, AND SAINT
FRANCIS xiii
FIRST SECTION
THE LONGER PIECES, WITH INTERLUDES
THE GOLDEN WHALES OF CALIFORNIA 3
KALAMAZOO 11
JOHN L. SULLIVAN, THE STRONG BOY OF BOSTON 14
BRYAN, BRYAN, BRYAN, BRYAN 18
RAMESES II 31
MOSES 32
A RHYME FOR ALL ZIONISTS 33
A MEDITATION ON THE SUN 38
DANTE 42
THE COMET OF PROPHECY 43
SHANTUNG, OR THE EMPIRE OF CHINA IS CRUMBLING
DOWN 46
THE LAST SONG OF LUCIFER 59
SECOND SECTION
A RHYMED SCENARIO, SOME POEM GAMES, AND
THE LIKE
A DOLL’S “ARABIAN NIGHTS” 71
THE LAME BOY AND THE FAIRY 77
THE BLACKSMITH’S SERENADE 83
THE APPLE BLOSSOM SNOW BLUES 87
THE DANIEL JAZZ 91
WHEN PETER JACKSON PREACHED IN THE OLD
CHURCH 95
THE CONSCIENTIOUS DEACON 97
DAVY JONES’ DOOR-BELL 99
THE SEA SERPENT CHANTEY 101
THE LITTLE TURTLE 104
THIRD SECTION
COBWEBS AND CABLES
THE SCIENTIFIC ASPIRATION 107
THE VISIT TO MAB 108
THE SONG OF THE STURDY SNAILS 110
ANOTHER WORD ON THE SCIENTIFIC ASPIRATION 113
DANCING FOR A PRIZE 114
COLD SUNBEAMS 116
FOR ALL WHO EVER SENT LACE VALENTINES 117
MY LADY IS COMPARED TO A YOUNG TREE 120
TO EVE, MAN’S DREAM OF WIFEHOOD, AS DESCRIBED
BY MILTON 121
A KIND OF SCORN 123
HARPS IN HEAVEN 125
THE CELESTIAL CIRCUS 126
THE FIRE-LADDIE, LOVE 128
FOURTH SECTION
RHYMES CONCERNING THE LATE WORLD WAR, AND THE
NEXT WAR
IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND JOYCE KILMER, POET AND
SOLDIER 133
THE TIGER ON PARADE 136
THE FEVER CALLED WAR 137
STANZAS IN JUST THE RIGHT TONE FOR THE SPIRITED
GENTLEMAN WHO WOULD CONQUER MEXICO 138
THE MODEST JAZZ-BIRD 140
THE STATUE OF OLD ANDREW JACKSON 144
SEW THE FLAGS TOGETHER 146
JUSTINIAN 149
THE VOICE OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI 150
IN WHICH ROOSEVELT IS COMPARED TO SAUL 151
HAIL TO THE SONS OF ROOSEVELT 153
THE SPACIOUS DAYS OF ROOSEVELT 155
FIFTH SECTION
RHYMES OF THE MIDDLE WEST AND SPRINGFIELD,
ILLINOIS
WHEN THE MISSISSIPPI FLOWED IN INDIANA 159
THE FAIRY FROM THE APPLE-SEED 161
A HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 163
THE DREAM OF ALL OF THE SPRINGFIELD WRITERS 166
THE SPRINGFIELD OF THE FAR FUTURE 168
AFTER READING THE SAD STORY OF THE FALL OF
BABYLON 170
ALEXANDER CAMPBELL 172
A WORD ON CALIFORNIA, PHOTOPLAYS, AND SAINT FRANCIS
In _The Art of the Moving Picture_, in the chapter on California and
America, I said, in part:
“The moving picture captains of industry, like the California gold
finders of 1849, making colossal fortunes in two or three years, have
the same glorious irresponsibility and occasional need of the sheriff.
They are Californians more literally than this. Around Los Angeles
the greatest and most characteristic moving picture colonies are
built. Each photoplay magazine has its California letter, telling of
the putting up of new studios, and the transfer of actors with much
slap-you-on-the-back personal gossip.
“... Every type of the photoplay but the intimate is founded on some
phase of the out-of doors. Being thus dependent, the plant can best be
set up where there is no winter. Besides this, the Los Angeles region
has the sea, the mountains, the desert, and many kinds of grove and
field....
“If the photoplay is the consistent utterance of its scenes, if the
actors are incarnations of the land they walk upon, as they should
be, California indeed stands a chance to achieve through the films an
utterance of her own. Will this land, furthest west, be the first to
capture the inner spirit of this newest and most curious of the arts?...
“People who revere the Pilgrim Fathers of 1620 have often wished those
gentlemen had moored their bark in the region of Los Angeles, rather
than Plymouth Rock, that Boston had been founded there. At last that
landing is achieved.
“Patriotic art students have discussed with mingled irony and
admiration the Boston domination of the only American culture of the
nineteenth century, namely, literature. Indianapolis has had her day
since then. Chicago is lifting her head. Nevertheless Boston still
controls the text book in English, and dominates our high schools.
Ironic feelings in this matter, on the part of western men, are based
somewhat on envy and illegitimate cussedness, but are also grounded in
the honest hope of a healthful rivalry. They want new romanticists and
artists as indigenous to their soil as was Hawthorne to witch-haunted
Salem, or Longfellow to the chestnuts of his native heath. Whatever may
be said of the patriarchs, from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Amos Bronson
Alcott, they were true sons of the New England stone fences and
meeting houses. They could not have been born or nurtured anywhere else
on the face of the earth.
“Some of us view with a peculiar thrill the prospect that Los Angeles
may become the Boston of the photoplay. Perhaps it would be better to
say the Florence, because California reminds one of colorful Italy,
more than of any part of the United States. Yet there is a difference.
“The present day man-in-the-street, man-about-town Californian has an
obvious magnificence about him that is allied to the eucalyptus tree,
the pomegranate....
“The enemy of California says the state is magnificent, but thin. He
declares it is as though it were painted on a Brobdingnagian piece of
gilt paper, and he who dampens his finger and thrusts it through finds
an alkali valley on the other side, the lonely prickly pear, and a heap
of ashes from a deserted camp-fire. He says the citizens of this state
lack the richness of an æsthetic and religious tradition. He says there
is no substitute for time. But even these things make for coincidence.
This apparent thinness California has in common with the routine
photoplay, which is at times as shallow in its thought as the shadow
it throws upon the screen. This newness California has in common with
all photoplays. It is thrillingly possible for the state and the art to
acquire spiritual tradition and depth together.
“Part of the thinness of California is not only its youth, but the
result of the physical fact that the human race is there spread over so
many acres of land. “Good” Californians count their mines and enumerate
their palm trees. They count the miles of their sea-coast, and the
acres under cultivation and the height of the peaks, and revel in large
statistics and the bigness generally, and forget how a few men rattle
around in a great deal of scenery. They shout the statistics across
the Rockies and the deserts to New York. The Mississippi valley is
non-existent to the Californian. His fellow-feeling is for the opposite
coast line. Through the geographical accident of separation by mountain
and desert from the rest of the country, he becomes a mere shouter,
hurrahing so assiduously that all variety in the voice is lost. Then he
tries gestures, and becomes flamboyant, rococo.
“These are the defects of the motion picture qualities. Also its
panoramic tendency runs wild. As an institution it advertises itself
with a sweeping gesture. It has the same passion for coast-line. These
are not the sins of New England. When, in the hands of masters, they
become sources of strength, they will be a different set of virtues
from those of New England....
“When the Californian relegates the dramatic to secondary scenes, both
in his life and his photoplay, and turns to the genuinely epic and
lyric, he and this instrument may find their immortality together as
New England found its soul in the essays of Emerson. Tide upon tide of
Spring comes into California, through all four seasons. Fairy beauty
overwhelms the lumbering grand-stand players. The tiniest garden is a
jewelled pathway of wonder. But the Californian cannot shout ‘orange
blossoms, orange blossoms; heliotrope, heliotrope.’ He cannot boom
forth ‘roseleaves, roseleaves’ so that he does their beauties justice.
Here is where the photoplay can begin to give him a more delicate
utterance. And he can go on into stranger things, and evolve all the
_Splendor Films_ into higher types, for the very name of California
is splendor.... The California photoplaywright can base his _Crowd
Picture_ upon the city-worshipping mobs of San Francisco. He can derive
his _Patriotic_ and _Religious Splendors_ from something older and more
magnificent than the aisles of the Romanesque, namely: the groves of
the giant redwoods.
“The campaigns for a beautiful nation could very well emanate from the
west coast, where, with the slightest care, grow up models for all the
world of plant arrangement and tree-luxury. Our mechanical east is
reproved, our tension is relaxed, our ugliness is challenged, every
time we look upon those garden-paths and forests.
“It is possible for Los Angeles to lay hold of the motion picture as
our national text book in art, as Boston appropriated to herself the
guardianship of the national text book of literature. If California
has a shining soul, and not merely a golden body, let her forget her
seventeen year old melodramatics, and turn to her poets who understand
the heart underneath the glory. Edwin Markham, the dean of American
singers, Clark Ashton Smith, the young star-treader, George Sterling
... have, in their songs, seeds of better scenarios than California has
sent us....
“California can tell us stories that are grim children of the tales of
the wild Ambrose Bierce. Then there is the lovely unforgotten Nora May
French, and the austere Edward Rowland Sill....”
All this from _The Art of the Moving Picture_ may serve to answer many
questions I have been asked as to my general ideas in the realms of
art and verse, and it may more particularly elucidate my _personal
attitude toward California_.
One item that should perhaps chasten the native son, is that these
motion picture people, so truly the hope of California, are not native
sons or daughters.
When I was in Los Angeles, visiting my cousin Ruby Vachel Lindsay, we
discussed many of these items at great length, as we walked about the
Los Angeles region together. I owe much of my conception of the more
idealistic moods of the state to those conversations. Others who have
shown me what might be called the Franciscan soul, of the Franciscan
minority, are Professor and Mrs. E. Olan James, my host and hostess at
Mills College. Another discriminating interpreter of the coast is that
follower of Alexander Campbell, Peter Clark Macfarlane, to whom I owe
much of my hope for a state that will some day gleam with spiritual and
Franciscan, and not earthly gold.
When I think of California, I think so emphatically of these people
and the things they have to say to the native sons, and the rest,
that if the discussion in this volume is not considered conclusive, I
refer the reader to these, and to the California poets, and to motion
picture people like Anita Loos and John Emerson, people who still dream
of things that are not gilded, and know the difference for instance,
between St. Francis and Mammon. For a general view of those poets of
California who make clear its spiritual gold, turn to “Golden Songs of
the Golden State,” an anthology collected by Marguerite Wilkinson.
FIRST SECTION
THE LONGER PIECES, WITH INTERLUDES
THE GOLDEN WHALES OF CALIFORNIA
_Part I. A Short Walk Along the Coast_
Yes, I have walked in California,
And the rivers there are blue and white.
Thunderclouds of grapes hang on the mountains.
Bears in the meadows pitch and fight.
(_Limber, double-jointed lords of fate,
Proud native sons of the Golden Gate._)
And flowers burst like bombs in California,
Exploding on tomb and tower.
And the panther-cats chase the red rabbits,
Scatter their young blood every hour.
And the cattle on the hills of California
And the very swine in the holes
Have ears of silk and velvet
And tusks like long white poles.
And the very swine, big hearted,
Walk with pride to their doom
For they feed on the sacred raisins
Where the great black agates loom.
Goshawfuls are Burbanked with the grizzly bears.
At midnight their children come clanking up the stairs.
They wriggle up the canyons,
Nose into the caves,
And swallow the papooses and the Indian braves.
The trees climb so high the crows are dizzy
Flying to their nests at the top.
While the jazz-birds screech, and storm the brazen beach
And the sea-stars turn flip flop.
The solid Golden Gate soars up to Heaven.
Perfumed cataracts are hurled
From the zones of silver snow
To the ripening rye below,
To the land of the lemon and the nut
And the biggest ocean in the world.
While the Native Sons, like lords tremendous
Lift up their heads with chants sublime,
And the band-stands sound the trombone, the saxophone and xylophone
And the whales roar in perfect tune and time.
And the chanting of the whales of California
I have set my heart upon.
It is sometimes a play by Belasco,
Sometimes a tale of Prester John.
_Part II. The Chanting of the Whales_
North to the Pole, south to the Pole
The whales of California wallow and roll.
They dive and breed and snort and play
And the sun struck feed them every day
Boatloads of citrons, quinces, cherries,
Of bloody strawberries, plums and beets,
Hogsheads of pomegranates, vats of sweets,
And the he-whales’ chant like a cyclone blares,
Proclaiming the California noons
So gloriously hot some days
The snake is fried in the desert
And the flea no longer plays.
There are ten gold suns in California
When all other lands have one,
For the Golden Gate must have due light
And persimmons be well-done.
And the hot whales slosh and cool in the wash
And the fume of the hollow sea.
Rally and roam in the loblolly foam
And whoop that their souls are free.
(_Limber, double-jointed lords of fate,
Proud native sons of the Golden Gate._)
And they chant of the forty-niners
Who sailed round the cape for their loot
With guns and picks and washpans
And a dagger in each boot.
How the richest became the King of England,
The poorest became the King of Spain,
The bravest a colonel in the army,
And a mean one went insane.
The ten gold suns are so blasting
The sunstruck scoot for the sea
And turn to mermen and mermaids
And whoop that their souls are free.
(_Limber, double-jointed lords of fate,
Proud native sons of the Golden Gate._)
And they take young whales for their bronchos
And old whales for their steeds,
Harnessed with golden seaweeds,
And driven with golden reeds.
They dance on the shore throwing roseleaves.
They kiss all night throwing hearts.
They fight like scalded wildcats
When the least bit of fighting starts.
They drink, these belly-busting devils
And their tremens shake the ground.
And then they repent like whirlwinds
And never were such saints found.
They will give you their plug tobacco.
They will give you the shirts off their backs.
They will cry for your every sorrow,
Put ham in your haversacks.
And they feed the cuttlefishes, whales and skates
With dates and figs in bales and crates:--
Shiploads of sweet potatoes, peanuts, rutabagas,
Honey in hearts of gourds:
Grapefruits and oranges barrelled with apples,
And spices like sharp sweet swords.
_Part III. St. Francis of San Francisco_
But the surf is white, down the long strange coast
With breasts that shake with sighs,
And the ocean of all oceans
Holds salt from weary eyes.
St. Francis comes to his city at night
And stands in the brilliant electric light
And his swans that prophesy night and day
Would soothe his heart that wastes away:
The giant swans of California
That nest on the Golden Gate
And beat through the clouds serenely
And on St. Francis wait.
But St. Francis shades his face in his cowl
And stands in the street like a lost grey owl.
He thinks of _gold_ ... _gold_.
He sees on far redwoods
Dewfall and dawning:
Deep in Yosemite
Shadows and shrines:
He hears from far valleys
Prayers by young Christians,
He sees their due penance
So cruel, so cold;
He sees them made holy,
White-souled like young aspens
With whimsies and fancies untold:--
_The opposite of gold_.
And the mighty mountain swans of California
Whose eggs are like mosque domes of Ind,
Cry with curious notes
That their eggs are good for boats
To toss upon the foam and the wind.
He beholds on far rivers
The venturesome lovers
Sailing for the sea
All night
In swanshells white.
He sees them far on the ocean prevailing
In a year and a month and a day of sailing
Leaving the whales and their whoop unfailing
On through the lightning, ice and confusion
North of the North Pole,
South of the South Pole,
And west of the west of the west of the west,
To the shore of Heartache’s Cure,
_The opposite of gold_,
On and on like Columbus
With faith and eggshell sure.
_Part IV. The Voice of the Earthquake_
But what is the earthquake’s cry at last
Making St. Francis yet aghast:--
[Sidenote: From here on, the audience joins in the refrain:--“_gold,
gold, gold_.”]
“Oh the flashing cornucopia of haughty California
Is _gold, gold, gold_.
Their brittle speech and their clutching reach
Is _gold, gold, gold_.
What is the fire-engine’s ding dong bell?
The burden of the burble of the bull-frog in the well?
_Gold, gold, gold.
What_ is the color of the cup and plate
And knife and fork of the chief of state?
_Gold, gold, gold._
_What_ is the flavor of the Bartlett pear?
_What_ is the savor of the salt sea air?
_Gold, gold, gold._
_What_ is the color of the sea-girl’s hair?
_Gold, gold, gold._
In the church of Jesus and the streets of Venus:--
_Gold, gold, gold._
What color are the cradle and the bridal bed?
What color are the coffins of the great grey dead?
_Gold, gold, gold._
What is the hue of the big whales’ hide?
_Gold, gold, gold._
What is the color of their guts’ inside?
_Gold, gold, gold._
“What is the color of the pumpkins in the moonlight?
_Gold, gold, gold._
The color of the moth and the worm in the starlight?
_Gold, gold, gold._”
KALAMAZOO
Once, in the city of Kalamazoo,
The gods went walking, two and two,
With the friendly phœnix, the stars of Orion,
The speaking pony and singing lion.
For in Kalamazoo in a cottage apart
Lived the girl with the innocent heart.
Thenceforth the city of Kalamazoo
Was the envied, intimate chum of the sun.
He rose from a cave by the principal street.
The lions sang, the dawn-horns blew,
And the ponies danced on silver feet.
He hurled his clouds of love around;
Deathless colors of his old heart
Draped the houses and dyed the ground.
Oh shrine of the wide young Yankee land,
Incense city of Kalamazoo,
That held, in the midnight, the priceless sun
As a jeweller holds an opal in hand!
From the awkward city of Oshkosh came
Love the bully no whip shall tame,
Bringing his gang of sinners bold.
And I was the least of his Oshkosh men;
But none were reticent, none were old.
And we joined the singing phœnix then,
And shook the lilies of Kalamazoo
All for one hidden butterfly.
Bulls of glory, in cars of war
We charged the boulevards, proud to die
For her ribbon sailing there on high.
Our blood set gutters all aflame,
Where the sun slept without any shame,
Cold rock till he must rise again.
She made great poets of wolf-eyed men--
The dear queen-bee of Kalamazoo,
With her crystal wings, and her honey heart.
We fought for her favors a year and a day
(Oh, the bones of the dead, the Oshkosh dead,
That were scattered along her pathway red!)
And then, in her harum-scarum way,
She left with a passing traveller-man--
With a singing Irishman
Went to Japan.
Why do the lean hyenas glare
Where the glory of Artemis had begun--
Of Atalanta, Joan of Arc,
Lorna Doone, Rosy O’Grady,
And Orphant Annie, all in one?
Who burned this city of Kalamazoo
Till nothing was left but a ribbon or two--
One scorched phœnix that mourned in the dew,
Acres of ashes, a junk-man’s cart,
A torn-up letter, a dancing shoe,
(And the bones of the valiant dead)?
Who burned this city of Kalamazoo--
Love-town, Troy-town Kalamazoo?
A harum-scarum innocent heart.
JOHN L. SULLIVAN, THE STRONG BOY OF BOSTON
_Inscribed to Louis Untermeyer and Robert Frost_
When I was nine years old, in 1889
I sent my love a lacy Valentine.
Suffering boys were dressed like Fauntleroys,
While Judge and Puck in giant humor vied.
The Gibson Girl came shining like a bride
To spoil the cult of Tennyson’s Elaine.
Louisa Alcott was my gentle guide....
Then ...
I heard a battle trumpet sound.
Nigh New Orleans
Upon an emerald plain
John L. Sullivan
The strong boy
Of Boston
Fought seventy-five red rounds with Jake Kilrain.
In simple sheltered 1889
Nick Carter I would piously deride.
Over the Elsie Books I moped and sighed.
St. Nicholas Magazine was all my pride,
While coarser boys on cellar doors would slide.
The grown ups bought refinement by the pound.
Rogers groups had not been told to hide.
E. P. Roe had just begun to wane.
Howells was rising, surely to attain!
The nation for a jamboree was gowned:--
Her hundredth year of roaring freedom crowned.
The British Lion ran and hid from Blaine
The razzle-dazzle hip-hurrah from Maine.
The mocking bird was singing in the lane....
Yet ...
“East side, west side, all around the town
The tots sang: ‘Ring a rosie--’
‘London Bridge is falling down.’”
And ...
John L. Sullivan
The strong boy
Of Boston
Broke every single rib of Jake Kilrain.
In dear provincial 1889,
Barnum’s bears and tigers could astound.
Ingersoll was called a most vile hound,
And named with Satan, Judas, Thomas Paine!
Robert Elsmere riled the pious brain.
Phillips Brooks for heresy was fried.
Boston Brahmins patronized Mark Twain.
The base ball rules were changed. That was a gain.
Pop Anson was our darling, pet and pride.
Native sons in Irish votes were drowned.
Tammany once more escaped its chain.
Once more each raw saloon was raising Cain.
The mocking bird was singing in the lane....
Yet ...
“East side, west side, all around the town
The tots sang: ‘Ring a rosie’
‘London Bridge is falling down.’”
And ...
John L. Sullivan
The strong boy
Of Boston
Finished the ring career of Jake Kilrain.
In mystic, ancient 1889,
Wilson with pure learning was allied.
Roosevelt gave forth a chirping sound.
Stanley found old Emin and his train.
Stout explorers sought the pole in vain.
To dream of flying proved a man insane.
The newly rich were bathing in champagne.
Van Bibber Davis, at a single bound
Displayed himself, and simpering glory found.
John J. Ingalls, like a lonely crane
Swore and swore, and stalked the Kansas plain.
The Cronin murder was the ages’ stain.
Johnstown was flooded, and the whole world cried.
We heard not of Louvain nor of Lorraine,
Or a million heroes for their freedom slain.
Of Armageddon and the world’s birth-pain--
The League of Nations, and the world one posy.
We _thought_ the world would loaf and sprawl and mosey.
The gods of Yap and Swat were sweetly dozy.
We _thought_ the far off gods of Chow had died.
The mocking bird was singing in the lane....
Yet ...
“East side, west side, all around the town
The tots sang: ‘Ring a rosie’
‘LONDON BRIDGE IS FALLING DOWN.’”
And ...
John L. Sullivan knocked out Jake Kilrain.
BRYAN, BRYAN, BRYAN, BRYAN
_The Campaign of Eighteen Ninety-six, as Viewed at the Time by a
Sixteen Year Old, etc._
I
In a nation of one hundred fine, mob-hearted, lynching,
relenting, repenting millions,
There are plenty of sweeping, swinging, stinging, gorgeous
things to shout about,
And knock your old blue devils out.
I brag and chant of Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,
Candidate for president who sketched a silver Zion,
The one American Poet who could sing out doors.
He brought in tides of wonder, of unprecedented splendor,
Wild roses from the plains, that made hearts tender,
All the funny circus silks
Of politics unfurled,
Bartlett pears of romance that were honey at the cores,
And torchlights down the street, to the end of the world.
There were truths eternal in the gab and tittle-tattle.
There were real heads broken in the fustian and the rattle.
There were real lines drawn:
Not the silver and the gold,
But Nebraska’s cry went eastward against the dour and old,
The mean and cold.
It was eighteen ninety-six, and I was just sixteen
And Altgeld ruled in Springfield, Illinois,
When there came from the sunset Nebraska’s shout of joy:--
In a coat like a deacon, in a black Stetson hat
He scourged the elephant plutocrats
With barbed wire from the Platte.
The scales dropped from their mighty eyes.
They saw that summer’s noon
A tribe of wonders coming
To a marching tune.
Oh the long horns from Texas,
The jay hawks from Kansas,
The plop-eyed bungaroo and giant giassicus,
The varmint, chipmunk, bugaboo,
The horned-toad, prairie-dog and ballyhoo,
From all the new-born states arow,
Bidding the eagles of the west fly on,
Bidding the eagles of the west fly on.
The fawn, prodactyl and thing-a-ma-jig,
The rakaboor, the hellangone,
The whangdoodle, batfowl and pig,
The coyote, wild-cat and grizzly in a glow,
In a miracle of health and speed, the whole breed abreast,
They leaped the Mississippi, blue border of the West,
From the Gulf to Canada, two thousand miles long:--
Against the towns of Tubal Cain,
Ah,--sharp was their song.
Against the ways of Tubal Cain, too cunning for the young,
The long-horn calf, the buffalo and wampus gave tongue.
These creatures were defending things Mark Hanna never dreamed:
The moods of airy childhood that in desert dews gleamed,
The gossamers and whimsies,
The monkeyshines and didoes
Rank and strange
Of the canyons and the range,
The ultimate fantastics
Of the far western slope,
And of prairie schooner children
Born beneath the stars,
Beneath falling snows,
Of the babies born at midnight
In the sod huts of lost hope,
With no physician there,
Except a Kansas prayer,
With the Indian raid a howling through the air.
And all these in their helpless days
By the dour East oppressed,
Mean paternalism
Making their mistakes for them,
Crucifying half the West,
Till the whole Atlantic coast
Seemed a giant spiders’ nest.
And these children and their sons
At last rode through the cactus,
A cliff of mighty cowboys
On the lope,
With gun and rope.
And all the way to frightened Maine the old East heard them call,
And saw our Bryan by a mile lead the wall
Of men and whirling flowers and beasts,
The bard and the prophet of them all.
Prairie avenger, mountain lion,
Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,
Gigantic troubadour, speaking like a siege gun,
Smashing Plymouth Rock with his boulders from the West,
And just a hundred miles behind, tornadoes piled across the sky,
Blotting out sun and moon,
A sign on high.
Headlong, dazed and blinking in the weird green light,
The scalawags made moan,
Afraid to fight.
II
When Bryan came to Springfield, and Altgeld gave him greeting,
Rochester was deserted, Divernon was deserted,
Mechanicsburg, Riverton, Chickenbristle, Cotton Hill,
Empty: for all Sangamon drove to the meeting--
In silver-decked racing cart,
Buggy, buckboard, carryall,
Carriage, phaeton, whatever would haul,
And silver-decked farm-wagons gritted, banged and rolled,
With the new tale of Bryan by the iron tires told.
The State House loomed afar,
A speck, a hive, a football,
A captive balloon!
And the town was all one spreading wing of bunting, plumes,
and sunshine,
Every rag and flag, and Bryan picture sold,
When the rigs in many a dusty line
Jammed our streets at noon,
And joined the wild parade against the power of gold.
We roamed, we boys from High School
With mankind,
While Springfield gleamed,
Silk-lined.
Oh Tom Dines, and Art Fitzgerald,
And the gangs that they could get!
I can hear them yelling yet.
Helping the incantation,
Defying aristocracy,
With every bridle gone,
Ridding the world of the low down mean,
Bidding the eagles of the West fly on,
Bidding the eagles of the West fly on,
We were bully, wild and wooly,
Never yet curried below the knees.
We saw flowers in the air,
Fair as the Pleiades, bright as Orion,
--Hopes of all mankind,
Made rare, resistless, thrice refined.
Oh we bucks from every Springfield ward!
Colts of democracy--
Yet time-winds out of Chaos from the star-fields of the Lord.
The long parade rolled on. I stood by my best girl.
She was a cool young citizen, with wise and laughing eyes.
With my necktie by my ear, I was stepping on my dear,
But she kept like a pattern, without a shaken curl.
She wore in her hair a brave prairie rose.
Her gold chums cut her, for that was not the pose.
No Gibson Girl would wear it in that fresh way.
But we were fairy Democrats, and this was our day.
The earth rocked like the ocean, the sidewalk was a deck.
The houses for the moment were lost in the wide wreck.
And the bands played strange and stranger music as they trailed along.
Against the ways of Tubal Cain,
Ah, sharp was their song!
The demons in the bricks, the demons in the grass,
The demons in the bank-vaults peered out to see us pass,
And the angels in the trees, the angels in the grass,
The angels in the flags, peered out to see us pass.
And the sidewalk was our chariot, and the flowers bloomed higher,
And the street turned to silver and the grass turned to fire,
And then it was but grass, and the town was there again,
A place for women and men.
III
Then we stood where we could see
Every band,
And the speaker’s stand.
And Bryan took the platform.
And he was introduced.
And he lifted his hand
And cast a new spell.
Progressive silence fell
In Springfield,
In Illinois,
Around the world.
Then we heard these glacial boulders across the prairie rolled:
“_The people have a right to make their own mistakes....
You shall not crucify mankind
Upon a cross of gold._”
And everybody heard him--
In the streets and State House yard.
And everybody heard him
In Springfield,
In Illinois,
Around and around and around the world,
That danced upon its axis
And like a darling broncho whirled.
IV
July, August, suspense.
Wall Street lost to sense.
August, September, October,
More suspense,
And the whole East down like a wind-smashed fence.
Then Hanna to the rescue,
Hanna of Ohio,
Rallying the roller-tops,
Rallying the bucket-shops,
Threatening drouth and death,
Promising manna,
Rallying the trusts against the bawling flannelmouth;
Invading misers’ cellars,
Tin-cans, socks,
Melting down the rocks,
Pouring out the long green to a million workers,
Spondulix by the mountain-load, to stop each new tornado,
And beat the cheapskate, blatherskite,
Populistic, anarchistic,
Deacon--desperado.
V
Election night at midnight:
Boy Bryan’s defeat.
Defeat of western silver.
Defeat of the wheat.
Victory of letterfiles
And plutocrats in miles
With dollar signs upon their coats,
Diamond watchchains on their vests
And spats on their feet.
Victory of custodians,
Plymouth Rock,
And all that inbred landlord stock.
Victory of the neat.
Defeat of the aspen groves of Colorado valleys,
The blue bells of the Rockies,
And blue bonnets of old Texas,
By the Pittsburg alleys.
Defeat of alfalfa and the Mariposa lily.
Defeat of the Pacific and the long Mississippi.
Defeat of the young by the old and silly.
Defeat of tornadoes by the poison vats supreme.
Defeat of my boyhood, defeat of my dream.
VI
Where is McKinley, that respectable McKinley,
The man without an angle or a tangle,
Who soothed down the city man and soothed down the farmer,
The German, the Irish, the Southerner, the Northerner,
Who climbed every greasy pole, and slipped through every crack;
Who soothed down the gambling hall, the bar-room, the church,
The devil vote, the angel vote, the neutral vote,
The desperately wicked, and their victims on the rack,
The gold vote, the silver vote, the brass vote, the lead vote,
Every vote....
Where is McKinley, Mark Hanna’s McKinley,
His slave, his echo, his suit of clothes?
Gone to join the shadows, with the pomps of that time,
And the flame of that summer’s prairie rose.
Where is Cleveland whom the Democratic platform
Read from the party in a glorious hour?
Gone to join the shadows with pitchfork Tillman,
And sledge-hammer Altgeld who wrecked his power.
Where is Hanna, bull dog Hanna,
Low browed Hanna, who said: “Stand pat”?
Gone to his place with old Pierpont Morgan.
Gone somewhere ... with lean rat Platt.
Where is Roosevelt, the young dude cowboy,
Who hated Bryan, then aped his way?
Gone to join the shadows with mighty Cromwell
And tall King Saul, till the Judgment day.
Where is Altgeld, brave as the truth,
Whose name the few still say with tears?
Gone to join the ironies with Old John Brown,
Whose fame rings loud for a thousand years.
Where is that boy, that Heaven-born Bryan,
That Homer Bryan, who sang from the West?
Gone to join the shadows with Altgeld the Eagle,
Where the kings and the slaves and the troubadours rest.
Written at the Guanella Ranch, Empire, Colorado, August, 1919.
RAMESES II
Would that the brave Rameses, King of Time
Were throned in your souls, to raise for you
Vast immemorial dreams dark Egypt knew,
Filling these barren days with Mystery,
With Life and Death, and Immortality,
The Devouring Ages, the all-consuming Sun:
God keep us brooding on eternal things,
God make us wizard-kings.
MOSES
Yet let us raise that Egypt-nurtured prince,
Son of a Hebrew, with the dauntless scorn
And hate for bleating gods Egyptian-born,
Showing with signs to stubborn Mizraim
“God is one God, the God of Abraham,”
He who in the beginning made the Sun.
God send us Moses from his hidden grave,
God make us meek and brave.
A RHYME FOR ALL ZIONISTS
_The Eyes of Queen Esther, and How they Conquered King
Ahasuerus_
“Esther had not showed her people nor her kindred.”
I
He harried lions up the peaks.
In blood and moss and snow they died.
He wore a cloak of lions’ manes
To satisfy his curious pride.
Men saw it, trimmed with emerald bands,
Flash on the crested battle-tide.
Where Bagdad stands, he hunted kings,
Burned them alive, his soul to cool.
Yet in his veins god Ormadz wrought
To make a just man of a fool.
He spoke the rigid truth, and rode,
And drew the bow, by Persian rule.
II
Ahasuerus in his prime
Was gracious and voluptuous.
He saw a pale face turn to him,
A gleam of Heaven’s righteousness:
A girl with hair of David’s gold
And Rachel’s face of loveliness.
He dropped his sword, he bowed his head.
She led his steps to courtesy.
He took her for his white north star:
A wedding of true majesty.
Oh, what a war for gentleness
Was in her bridal fantasy!
Why did he fall by candlelight
And press his bull-heart to her feet?
He found them as the mountain-snow
Where lions died. Her hands were sweet
As ice upon a blood-burnt mouth,
As mead to reapers in the wheat.
The little nation in her soul
Bloomed in her girl’s prophetic face.
She named it not, and yet he felt
One challenge: her eternal race.
This was the mystery of her step,
Her trembling body’s sacred grace.
He stood, a priest, a Nazarite,
A rabbi reading by a tomb.
The hardy raider saw and feared
Her white knees in the palace gloom,
Her pouting breasts and locks well combed
Within the humming, reeling room.
Her name was _Meditation_ there:
Fair opposite of bullock’s brawn.
I sing her eyes that conquered him.
He bent before his little fawn,
Her dewy fern, her bitter weed,
Her secret forest’s floor and lawn.
He gave her Shushan[1] from the walls.
She saw it not, and turned not back.
Her eyes kept hunting through his soul
As one may seek through battle black
For one dear banner held on high,
For one bright bugle in the rack.
The scorn that loves the sexless stars:
Traditions passionless and bright:
The ten commands (to him unknown),
The pillar of the fire by night:--
Flashed from her alabaster crown
The while they kissed by candlelight.
The rarest psalms of David came
From her dropped veil (odd dreams to him).
It prophesied, he knew not how,
Against his endless armies grim.
He saw his Shushan in the dust--
Far in the ages growing dim.
Then came a glance of steely blue,
Flash of her body’s silver sword.
Her eyes of law and temple prayer
Broke him who spoiled the temple hoard.
The thief who fouled all little lands
Went mad before her, and adored.
The girl was Eve in Paradise,
Yet Judith, till her war was won.
All of the future tyrants fell
In this one king, ere night was done,
And Israel, captive then as now
Ruled with tomorrow’s rising sun.
And in the logic of the skies
He who keeps Israel in his hand,
The God whose hope for joy on earth
The Gentile yet shall understand,
Through powers like Esther’s steadfast eyes
Shall free each little tribe and land.
These verses were written for the Phi Beta Kappa Society of
Philadelphia and read at their meeting, December 8, 1917.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Shushan--the royal city.
A MEDITATION ON THE SUN
I
Come, let us think upon the great that came
Our spiritual solar-kings, whose fame
Is quenchless in the lands of mental light,
High planets in the vast historic game:
Youths from the sky, they came in splendid flight.
We hold to them as to our day and night,
And by them measure out our moments here,
Our greatness, littleness, and wrong and right.
For like the sun, we carry yesteryears
Within our wallets: all the ancient fears
And scorns and triumphs woven in our cloaks,
Our tall plumes bought with some lost race’s tears.
Oh Sun, I wish that all the nations bright
You ever looked upon were in my sight,
That I had stood up in your royal car
With your eye-rays to search out field and height:
To see young David, leading forth his sheep,
The Christ Child on the Hill of Nazareth sleep,
To watch proud Dante climb the stranger’s stairs,
To see the ocean round Columbus leap.
And beauty absolute man’s heart has known
In those old hills where the Greek blood was sown,
They named you young Apollo in that day
And served you well, and loved your chariot-throne.
Would I had looked on Venice in her prime.
And long had watched the prayerful Gothic time
When Notre Dame arose, a mystery there
In wicked good old Paris and its grime!
II
Oh light, light, light! Oh Sun your light is good.
You stir the sap of garden, field and wood,
Of men and ages. And your deeds are fair,
And by this light, is God’s love understood.
So let us think upon Creation’s days
And Great Jehovah Moses came to praise:--
The God the Hebrews said excelled the sun,
To whom all psalms are due, who made the ways
The sun shall follow till he burns no more
Till he is cold and clinkered to the core.
Praise God, and not the sun too much, my soul,
The God behind the sun we must adore.
III
Oh Sun, that yet will my spring thoughts astound,
How often this lone mendicant you found
Stripped in your presence of all earthly things.
A happy dervish whirling round and round.
You were his tree of incense and his feast,
You were his wagon and his harnessed beast,
His singing brother, yet his tyrant hard,
With whip and spur and shout that never ceased.
He thought of Freedom that rides round with you
Healing the nations with a crystal dew,
The comrade of your car, with Science there,
Making the ways of men forever new.
Would we might lift a mighty battle-cry.
Nations and mendicants, and shake your sky:
Would that you caught us singing as one man
That song I sang when begging days began
Hearing it in every beam on high:
“Man’s spirit-darkness shall forever die.”
DANTE
Would we were lean and grim, and shaken with hate
Like Dante, fugitive, o’er-wrought with cares,
And climbing bitterly the stranger’s stairs,
Yet Love, Love, Love, divining: finding still
Beyond dark Hell the penitential hill,
And blessed Beatrice beyond the grave.
Jehovah lead us through the wilderness:
God make our wandering brave.
THE COMET OF PROPHECY
I had hold of the comet’s mane
A-clinging like grim death.
I passed the dearest star of all,
The one with violet breath:
The blue-gold-silver Venus star,
And almost lost my hold....
Again I ride the chaos-tide,
Again the winds are cold.
I look ahead, I look above,
I look on either hand.
I cannot sight the fields I seek,
The holy No-Man’s-Land.
And yet my heart is full of faith.
My comet splits the gloom,
His red mane slaps across my face,
His eyes like bonfires loom.
My comet smells the far off grass
Of valleys richly green.
My comet sights strange continents
My sad eyes have not seen,
We gallop through the whirling mist.
My good steed cannot fail.
And we shall reach that flowery shore,
And wisdom’s mountain scale.
And I shall find my wizard cloak
Beneath that alien sky
And touching black soil to my lips
Begin to prophesy.
While chaos sleet and chaos rain
Beat on an Indian Drum
There in tomorrow’s moon I stand
And speak the age to come.
“Confucius appeared, according to Mencius, one of his most
distinguished followers, at a crisis in the nation’s history. ‘The
world,’ he says, ‘had fallen into decay, and right principles had
disappeared. Perverse discourses and oppressive deeds were waxen rife.
Ministers murdered their rulers, and sons their fathers. Confucius was
frightened by what he saw,--and he undertook the work of reformation.’
“He was a native of the state of Lu, a part of the modern Shantung....
Lu had a great name among the other states of Chow ... etc.” Rev. James
Legge, Professor of Chinese, University of Oxford.
SHANTUNG, OR THE EMPIRE OF CHINA IS CRUMBLING DOWN
_Dedicated to William Rose Benét_
I
_Now let the generations pass--
Like sand through Heaven’s blue hour-glass._
In old Shantung,
By the capital where poetry began,
Near the only printing presses known to man,
Young Confucius walks the shore
On a sorrowful day.
The town, all books, is tumbling down
Through the blue bay.
The book-worms writhe
From rusty musty walls.
They drown themselves like rabbits in the sea.
_Venomous foreigners harry mandarins_
With pitchfork, blunderbuss and snickersnee.
In the book-slums there is thunder;
Gunpowder, that sad wonder,
Intoxicates the knights and beggar-men.
The old grotesques of war begin again:
Rebels, devils, fairies, are set free.
So ...
Confucius hears a carol and a hum:
A picture sea-child whirs from off his fan
In one quick breath of peach-bloom fantasy,
Then, in an instant bows the reverent knee--
A full-grown sweetheart, chanting his renown.
And then she darts into the Yellow Sea,
Calling, calling:
“Sage with holy brow,
Say farewell to China now;
Live like the swine,
Leave off your scholar-gown!
This city of books is falling, falling,
The Empire of China is crumbling down.”
II
_Confucius, Confucius, how great was Confucius--
The sage of Shantung, and the master of Mencius?_
Alexander fights the East.
Just as the Indus turns him back
He hears of tempting lands beyond,
With sword-swept cities on the rack
With crowns outshining India’s crown:
The Empire of China, crumbling down.
Later the Roman sibyls say:
“Egypt, Persia and Macedon,
Tyre and Carthage, passed away;
And the Empire of China is crumbling down.
Rome will never crumble down.”
III
_See how the generations pass--
Like sand through Heaven’s blue hour-glass._
Arthur waits on the British shore
One thankful day,
For Galahad sails back at last
To Camelot Bay.
The _pure_ knight lands and tells the tale:
“Far in the east
A sea-girl led us to a king,
The king to a feast,
In a land where poppies bloom for miles,
Where books are made like bricks and tiles.
I taught that king to love your name--
Brother and Christian he became.
“His Town of Thunder-Powder keeps
A giant hound that never sleeps,
A crocodile that sits and weeps.
“His Town of Cheese the mouse affrights
With fire-winged cats that light the nights.
They glorify the land of rust;
Their sneeze is music in the dust.
(And deep and ancient is the dust.)
“All towns have one same miracle
With the Town of Silk, the capital--
Vast book-worms in the book-built walls.
Their creeping shakes the silver halls;
They look like cables, and they seem
Like writhing roots on trees of dream.
Their sticky cobwebs cross the street,
Catching scholars by the feet,
Who own the tribes, yet rule them not,
Bitten by book-worms till they rot.
Beggars and clowns rebel in might
Bitten by book-worms till they fight.”
Arthur calls to his knights in rows:
“I will go if Merlin goes;
These rebels must be flayed and sliced--
Let us cut their throats for Christ.”
But Merlin whispers in his beard:
“China has witches to be feared.”
Arthur stares at the sea-foam’s rim
Amazed. The fan-girl beckons him!--
That slender and peculiar child
Mongolian and brown and wild.
His eyes grow wide, his senses drown.
She laughs in her wing, like the sleeve of a gown.
She lifts a key of crimson stone:
“The Great Gunpowder-town you own.”
She lifts a key with chains and rings:
“I give the town where cats have wings.”
She lifts a key as white as milk:
“This unlocks the Town of Silk”--
Throws forty keys at Arthur’s feet:
“These unlock the land complete.”
Then, frightened by suspicious knights,
And Merlin’s eyes like altar-lights,
And the Christian towers of Arthur’s town,
She spreads blue fins--she whirs away;
Fleeing far across the bay,
Wailing through the gorgeous day:
“My sick king begs
That you save his crown
And his learnèd chiefs from the worm and clown--
The Empire of China is crumbling down.”
IV
_Always the generations pass,
Like sand through Heaven’s blue hour-glass!_
The time the King of Rome is born--
Napoleon’s son, that eaglet thing--
Bonaparte finds beside his throne
One evening, laughing in her wing,
The Chinese sea-child; and she cries,
Breaking his heart with emerald eyes
And fairy-bred unearthly grace:
“Master, take your destined place--
Across white foam and water blue
The streets of China call to you:
The Empire of China is crumbling down.”
Then he bends to kiss her mouth,
And gets but incense, dust and drouth.
Custodians, custodians!
Mongols and Manchurians!
Christians, wolves, Mohammedans!
In hard Berlin they cried: “O King,
China’s way is a shameful thing!”
In Tokio they cry: “O King,
China’s way is a shameful thing!”
And thus our song might call the roll
Of every land from pole to pole,
And every rumor known to time
Of China doddering--or sublime.
V
_Slowly the generations pass--
Like sand through Heaven’s blue hour-glass._
So let us find tomorrow now:
Our towns are gone;
Our books have passed; ten thousand years
Have thundered on.
The Sphinx looks far across the world
In fury black:
She sees all western nations spent
Or on the rack.
Eastward she sees one land she knew
When from the stone
Priests of the sunrise carved her out
And left her lone.
She sees the shore Confucius walked
On his sorrowful day:
_Impudent foreigners rioting_,
In the ancient way;
Officials, futile as of old,
Have gowns more bright;
Bookworms are fiercer than of old,
Their skins more white;
Dust is deeper than of old,
More bats are flying;
More songs are written than of old--
More songs are dying.
Where Galahad found forty towns
Now fade and glare
Ten thousand towns with book-tiled roof
And garden-stair,
Where beggars’ babies come like showers
Of classic words:
They rule the world--immortal brooks
And magic birds.
The lion Sphinx roars at the sun:
“I hate this nursing you have done!
The meek inherit the earth too long--
When will the world belong to the strong?”
She soars; she claws his patient face--
The girl-moon screams at the disgrace.
The sun’s blood fills the western sky;
He hurries not, and will not die.
The baffled Sphinx, on granite wings,
Turns now to where young China sings.
One thousand of ten thousand towns
Go down before her silent wrath;
Yet even lion-gods may faint
And die upon their brilliant path.
She sees the Chinese children romp
In dust that she must breathe and eat.
Her tongue is reddened by its lye;
She craves its grit, its cold and heat.
The Dust of Ages holds a glint
Of fire from the foundation-stones,
Of spangles from the sun’s bright face,
Of sapphires from earth’s marrow-bones.
Mad-drunk with it, she ends her day--
Slips when a high sea-wall gives way,
Drowns in the cold Confucian sea
Where the whirring fan-girl first flew free.
_In the light of the maxims of Chesterfield, Mencius,
Wilson, Roosevelt, Tolstoy, Trotsky,
Franklin or Nietzsche, how great was Confucius?_
“_Laughing Asia_” brown and wild,
That lyric and immortal child,
His fan’s gay daughter, crowned with sand,
Between the water and the land
Now cries on high in irony,
With a voice of night-wind alchemy:
“O cat, O sphinx,
O stony-face,
The joke is on Egyptian pride,
The joke is on the human race:
‘The meek inherit the earth too long--
When will the world belong to the strong?’
I am born from off the holy fan
Of the world’s most patient gentleman.
So answer me,
O courteous sea!
O deathless sea!”
And thus will the answering Ocean call:
“China will fall,
The Empire of China will crumble down,
When the Alps and the Andes crumble down;
When the sun and the moon have crumbled down,
The Empire of China will crumble down,
Crumble down.”
In the following narrative, Lucifer is not Satan, King of Evil, who in
the beginning led the rebels from Heaven, establishing the underworld.
Lucifer is here taken as a character appearing much later, the first
singing creature weary of established ways in music, moved with the
lust of wandering. He finds the open road between the stars too lonely.
He wanders to the kingdom of Satan, there to sing a song that so moves
demons and angels that he is, at its climax, momentary emperor of Hell
and Heaven, and the flame kindled of the tears of the demons devastates
the golden streets.
Therefore it is best for the established order of things that this
wanderer shall be cursed with eternal silence and death. But since then
there has been music in every temptation, in every demon voice.
Along with a set of verses called _The Heroes of Time_, and another
_The Tree of Laughing Bells_, I exchanged _The Last Song of Lucifer_
for a night’s lodging in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio, as narrated
in _A Handy Guide for Beggars_.
The fourteenth chapter of Isaiah contains these words on Lucifer:
“Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the
worm is spread under thee and the worms cover thee.
“How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning. How
art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations.
“For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into Heaven, I will
exalt my throne above the stars of God....
“All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every
one in his own house.
“But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as
the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that
go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcass trodden under feet.
“Thou shalt not be joined to them in burial, because thou hast
destroyed thy land.”
THE LAST SONG OF LUCIFER
_To Be Read Like a Meditation_
[Sidenote: _Lucifer dreams of his fate and then forgets the dream._]
When Lucifer was undefiled,
When Lucifer was young,
When only angel-music
Fell from his glorious tongue,
Dreaming in his innocence
Beneath God’s golden trees
By genius pure his fancy fell--
By sweet divine disease--
To a wilderness of sorrows dim
Beneath the ether seas.
That father of radiant harmony,
Of music transcendently bright--
Truest to art since heaven began,
Wrapped in royal, melodious light--
That beautiful light-bearer, lofty and loyal
Dreamed bitter dreams of enigma and night.
But soon the singer woke and stood
And tuned his harp to sing anew
And scorned the dreams (as well he should)
For only to the evil crew
Are dreams of dread and evil true,
Remembered well, or understood.
[Sidenote: _The dream is fulfilled._]
But when a million years were done
And a million million years beside,
He broke his harp-strings one by one;
He sighed, aweary of rich things,
He spread his pallid, heavy wings
And flew to find the deathless stains,
The wounds that come with wanderings.
[Sidenote: _He will never dream again, but the demons dream of
wandering and singing, and doing all things just as he did in his day._]
He chose the solemn paths of Hell,
He sang for that dumb land too well,
Defying their disdain
Till he was cursed and slain.
Ah--he shall never dream again--
Mourn, for he shall not dream again--
But the demons dream in pain,
Of wandering in the night
And singing in the night,
Singing till they reign.
[Sidenote: _Music is holy, even in the infernal world._]
[Sidenote: _If Lucifer’s song could be completely remembered, one would
be willing to pay the great price._]
Oh hallowed are the demons,
A-dreaming songs again,
And holy to my heart! the ancient music-art,
That echo of a memory in demon-haunted men,
That hope of music, sweet hope, vain,
That sets the world a-seeking--
A passion pure, a subtle pain
Too dear for song or speaking.
Oh, who would not with the demons be,
For the fullness of their memory
Of that dayspring song,
Of that holy thing
That Lucifer alone could sing,
That Hell and Earth so hopelessly
And gloriously are seeking!
[Sidenote: NOW FOLLOWS WHAT EVERY DEMON SAYS IN HIS HEART, REMEMBERING
THAT TIME]
* * * * *
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _How the singer made his lyre._]
Oh, Lucifer, great Lucifer,
Oh, fallen, ancient Lucifer,
Master, lost, of the angel choir--
Silent, suffering Lucifer:
Once your alchemies of Hell
Wrought your chains to a magic lyre
All strung with threads of purple fire,
Till the hell-hounds moaned from your bitter spell--
The sweetest song since the demons fell--
Haunting song of the heart’s desire.
[Sidenote: _How the song began._]
Oh, Lucifer, great Lucifer,
You who have sung in vain,
Ecstasy of sweet regret,
Ecstasy of pain,
Strain that the angels can never forget,
Haunting the children of punishment yet,
Bowing them, bringing their tears in the darkness;
Oh, the night-caves of Chaos are breathing it yet!
The last that your bosom may ever deliver,
Oh, musical master of æons and æons....
Nor devils nor dragons may ever forget,
Though the walls of our prison should crumble and shiver,
And the death-dews of Chaos our armor should wet,
For the song of the infamous Lucifer
Was an anthem of glorious scorning
And courage, and horrible pain--
Was the song of a Son of the Morning,
A song that was sung in vain.
Oh singing was only in Heaven
Ere Lucifer’s melody came,
But when Lucifer’s harp-strings grew loud in their sighing,
When he called up the dragons by name--
The song was the sorrow of sorrows,
The song was the Hope of Despair,
Or the smile of a warrior falling--
A prayer and a curse and a prayer--
Or a soul going down through the shadows and calling,
Or the laughter of Night in his lair;
The song was the fear of ten thousand tomorrows--
On the racks of grief and of pain--
The herald of silences, dreadful, unending,
When the last little echo should listen in vain....
[Sidenote: _How the song made the demons dream they were still fighting
for Satan._]
It was memory, memory,
Visions of glory,--
Memory, memory,
Visions of fight.
The pride of the onset,
The banners that fluttered,
The wails of the battle-pierced angels of light.
Song of the times of the Nether Empire
The age when our desperate band
Heaped our redoubts with the horrible fire
On the fringes of Holier Land--
Conquering always, conquering never,
Building a throne of sand--
When Satan still wielded that glorious scepter--
The sword of his glorious hand.
Then rang the martial music
Sung by the hosts of God
In the first of the shameful years of fear
When we bit the purple sod:
He sang that shameful battle-story--
He twanged each threaded torture-flame;
Wherever his leprous fingers came
They drew from the strings a groan of glory:
[Sidenote: _How the song enchanted them til they were in fancy the good
warriors of God, and they shouted their enemy’s battle-cry._]
Then we dreamed at last,
Then we lost the past,
We dreamed we were angels in battle-array:
We tore our hearts with God’s battle-yell
And the sound crashed up from the smoky fen
And the battle sweat stood forth
On the awful brows of our fighting men:
And the magical singer, grim and wild
Swept his harp again, and smiled,
And the harp-strings lifted our cries that day
Till the thundering charge reached the City on High--
God’s charge, that he thought
Had passed for aye,
When our last fond hope went down to die.
[Sidenote: _How, at the climax of the song Lucifer almost restored the
first day of creation, when the Universe was happy and sinless._]
[Sidenote: _How the tears of the distracted demons become a
heaven-climbing flame._]
Oh throbbing, sweet, enthralling spell!
Madly, madly, oh my heart--
Heart of anguish, heart of Hell--
Beat the music through your night--
Pierced the strain that the wanderer
Wrought with fingers white;
For last he sang--of the morning--
The song of the Sons of the Morning--
The fire of the star-souled Lucifer
Before he had known a stain;
That song which came when the suns were young
And the Dayspring knew his place--
That joy, full born, that unknown tongue,
That shouting chant of the Sons of God
When first they saw Jehovah’s face.
And the Wanderer laughed, then sang it at last
Till it leaped as a flame to the forests on high
And the tears of the demons were fire in the sky.
[Sidenote: _How Lucifer seemed to make himself God._]
And just for a breath he conquered and reigned,
For one quick pulse of time he stood;
By flame was crowned where God had been
Himself the Word sublime--
Himself the Most High Love unstained,
The Great, Good King of the Stars and Years--
Crowned, enthroned, by a leaping flame--
The fire of our love-born tears.
[Sidenote: _How the angels were conquered by the sound of his music
from afar, and the Demons were torn with love._]
And the angels bowed down, for his glory was vast--
Loving their conqueror, weeping, aghast--
While we sobbed, for a moment repenting the past,
And the mock-hope came, that eats and stings,
The hope for innocent dawns above,
The joy of it beat in our ears like wings,
Our iron cheeks seared with the tears of love--
Was it not enough,
Was it not enough
That our cheeks were seared with the tears of Love?
[Sidenote: _Demons and angels curse the singer._]
So we cursed the harping of Lucifer
The lyre was lost from his leper hands
And the hell-hounds tore his living heart.
And the angels cursed great Lucifer
For his purple flame consumed their lands
Till golden ways were desert sands;
They hurled him down, afar, apart.
[Sidenote: _The Punishment._]
Beneath where the Gulfs of Silence end,
Where never sighs nor songs descend,
Never a hell-flare in his eyes
Alone, alone, afar he lies....
Fearfully alone, beyond immortal ken
He is further down in the deep of pain
Than is Hell from the grief of men;
And his memories of music
Are rare as desert-rain.
Ended forever the ecstasy
And song too sweet for scorning--
The song that was still in vain;
And the shout of the battle-charge of God--
Ended forever the Song of the Morning--
The Song that was sung in vain.
SECOND SECTION
A RHYMED SCENARIO, SOME POEM GAMES, AND THE LIKE
A DOLL’S “ARABIAN NIGHTS”
_A Rhymed Scenario for Mae Marsh, when she acts in the new many-colored
films_
I dreamed the play was real.
I walked into the screen.
Like Alice through the looking-glass,
I found a curious scene.
The black stones took on flame.
The shadows shone with eyes.
The colors poured and changed
In a Hell’s debauch of dyes,
In a street with incense thick,
In a court of witch-bazars,
With flambeaux by the stalls
Whose splutter hid the stars.
Camels stalked in line.
Courtezans tripped by
Dressed in silks and gems,
Copper diadems,
All the wealth they had.
[Sidenote: _This refrain to be elaborately articulated and the
instrumental music then made to match it precisely._]
_Oh quivering lights,_
_Arabian Nights!_
_Bagdad,_
_Bagdad!_
You were a guarded girl
In a palanquin of gold.
I was buying figs:
All my hands could hold.
You slipped a note to me.
Your eyes made me your slave.
“Twelve paces back,” you wrote.
No other word gave.
The delicate dove house swayed
Close-veiled, a snare most sweet.
“Joy” said the silver bells
On the palanquin-bearers’ feet.
Then by a mosque, a dervish
Yelled and whirled like mad.
_Oh quivering lights,
Arabian Nights!
Bagdad,
Bagdad!_
I reached a dim, still court.
I saw you there afar,
Beckoning from the roof,
Veiled, a cloud-wrapped star.
And your black slave said: “Proud boy,
Do you dare everything
With your young arm and bright steel?
Then climb. You are her king.”
And I heard a hiss of knives
In the doorway dark and bad.
_Oh quivering lights,
Arabian Nights!
Bagdad,
Bagdad!_
The stairway climbed and climbed.
It spoke. It shouted lies.
I reached a tar-black room,
A panther’s belly gloom,
Filled with howls and sighs.
I found the roof. Twelve kings
Rose up to stab me there.
But I sent them to their graves.
My singing shook the air.
My scimitar seemed more
Than any steel could be,
A whirling wheel, a pack
Of death-hounds guarding me.
And then you came like May.
You bound my torn breast well
With your discarded veil.
And flowery silence fell.
While Mohammed spread his wings
In the stars, you bent me back,
With a quick kiss touched my mouth,
And my heart was on the rack.
Oh dreadful, deathless love!
Oh kiss of Islam fire.
And your flashing hands were more
Than all a thief’s desire.
[Sidenote: _The morning after is always noted in the Arabian Nights._]
I woke by twelve dead curs
On bloody, stony ground.
And the grey watch muttered “shame,”
As he tottered on his round.
You had written on my sword:--
“Goodby, O iron arm.
I love you much too well
To do you further harm.
And as my pledge and sign
You are in crimson clad.”
_Oh quivering lights,
Arabian Nights!
Bagdad,
Bagdad!_
* * * * *
* * * * *
The rocs scream in the air.
The ghouls my pathway clear.
For I have drunk the soul
Of the dazzling maid they fear.
The long handclasp you gave
Still shakes upon my hands.
O, daughter of a Jinn
I plot in Islam lands,
Haunting purple streets,
Hissing, snarling, bold,
A robber never jailed,
A beggar never cold.
I shall be sultan yet
In this old crimson clad.
_Oh quivering lights,
Arabian Nights!
Bagdad,
Bagdad!_
THE LAME BOY AND THE FAIRY
_To be Chanted with a Suggestion of Chopin’s Berceuse_
_A Poem Game. See the Chinese Nightingale, pages 93 through 97_
A lame boy
Met a fairy
In a meadow
Where the bells grow.
And the fairy
Kissed him gaily.
And the fairy
Gave him friendship,
Gave him healing,
Gave him wings.
“All the fashions
I will give you.
You will fly, dear,
All the long year.
“Wings of springtime,
Wings of summer,
Wings of autumn,
Wings of winter!
“Here is
A dress for springtime.”
And she gave him
A dress of grasses,
Orchard blossoms,
Wildflowers found in
Mountain passes,
_Shoes of song and
Wings of rhyme_.
“Here is
A dress for summer.”
And she gave him
A hat of sunflowers,
A suit of poppies,
Clover, daisies,
All from wheat-sheaves
In harvest time;
_Shoes of song and
Wings of rhyme_.
“Here is
A dress for autumn.”
And she gave him
A suit of red haw,
Hickory, apple,
Elder, paw paw,
Maple, hazel,
Elm and grape leaves.
And blue
And white
Cloaks of smoke,
And veils of sunlight,
From the Indian summer prime!
_Shoes of song and
Wings of rhyme._
“Here is
A dress for winter.”
And she gave him
A polar bear suit,
And he heard the
Christmas horns toot,
And she gave him
Green festoons and
Red balloons and
All the sweet cakes
And the snow flakes
Of Christmas time,
_Shoes of song and
Wings of rhyme_.
And the fairy
Kept him laughing,
Led him dancing,
Kept him climbing
On the hill tops
Toward the moon.
“We shall see silver ships.
We shall see singing ships,
Valleys of spray today,
Mountains of foam.
We have been long away,
Far from our wonderland.
Here come the ships of love
Taking us home.
“Who are our captains bold?
They are the saints of old.
One is Saint Christopher.
He takes your hand.
He leads the cloudy fleet.
He gives us bread and meat.
His is our ship till
We reach our dear land.
“Where is our house to be?
Far in the ether sea.
There where the North Star
Is moored in the deep.
Sleepy old comets nod
There on the silver sod.
Sleepy young fairy flowers
Laugh in their sleep.
“A hundred years
And
A day,
There we will fly
And play
I spy and cross tag.
And meet on the high way,
And call to the game
Little Red Riding Hood,
Goldilocks, Santa Claus,
Every beloved
And heart-shaking name.”
And the lame child
And the fairy
Journeyed far, far
To the North Star.
THE BLACKSMITH’S SERENADE
_A pantomime and farce, to be acted by My Lady on one side of
a shutter, while the singer chants on the other, to an iron
guitar._
John Littlehouse the redhead was a large ruddy man
Quite proud to be a blacksmith, and he loved Polly Ann, Polly Ann.
Straightway to her window with his iron guitar he came
Breathing like a blacksmith--his wonderful heart’s flame.
Though not very bashful and not very bold
He had reached the plain conclusion his passion must be told.
And so he sang: “Awake, awake,”--this hip-hoo-rayious man.
“Do you like me, do you love me, Polly Ann, Polly Ann?
The rooster on my coalshed crows at break of day.
It makes a person happy to hear his roundelay.
The fido in my woodshed barks at fall of night.
He makes one feel so safe and snug. He barks exactly right.
I swear to do my stylish best and purchase all I can
Of the flummeries, flunkeries and mummeries of man.
And I will carry in the coal and the water from the spring
And I will sweep the porches if you will cook and sing.
No doubt your Pa sleeps like a rock. Of course Ma is awake
But dares not say she hears me, for gentle custom’s sake.
Your sleeping father knows I am a decent honest man.
Will you wake him, Polly Ann,
And if he dares deny it I will thrash him, lash bash mash
Hash him, Polly Ann.
Hum hum hum, fee fie fo fum--
And my brawn should wed your beauty
Do you hear me, Polly Ann, Polly Ann?”
Polly had not heard of him before, but heard him now.
She blushed behind the shutters like a pippin on the bough.
She was not overfluttered, she was not overbold.
She was glad a lad was living with a passion to be told.
But she spoke up to her mother: “Oh, what an awful man:--”
This merry merry quite contrary tricky trixy, Polly Ann, Polly Ann.
The neighbors put their heads out of the windows. They said:--
“What sort of turtle dove is this that seems to wake the dead?”
Yes, in their nighties whispered this question to the night.
They did not dare to shout it. It wouldn’t be right.
And so, I say, they whispered:--“Does she hear this awful man,
Polly Ann, Polly Ann?”
John Littlehouse the redhead sang on of his desires:
“Steel makes the wires of lyres, makes the frames of terrible towers
And circus chariots’ tires.
Believe me, dear, a blacksmith man can feel.
I will bind you, if I can to my ribs with hoops of steel.
Do you hear me, Polly Ann, Polly Ann?”
And then his tune was silence, for he was not a fool.
He let his voice rest, his iron guitar cool.
And thus he let the wind sing, the stars sing and the grass sing,
The prankishness of love sing, the girl’s tingling feet sing,
Her trembling sweet hands sing, her mirror in the dark sing,
Her grace in the dark sing, her pillow in the dark sing,
The savage in her blood sing, her starved little heart sing,
Silently sing.
“Yes, I hear you, Mister Man,”
To herself said Polly Ann, Polly Ann.
He shouted one great loud “_Good night_,” and laughed,
And skipped home.
And every star was winking in the wide wicked dome.
And early in the morning, sweet Polly stole away.
And though the town went crazy, she is his wife today.
THE APPLE BLOSSOM SNOW BLUES
_A “blues” is a song in the mood of Milton’s Il Penseroso, or
a paragraph from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. This present
production is the chronicle of the secret soul of a vaudeville
man, as he dances in the limelight with his haughty lady. Let
the reader take special pains to make his own tune for this
production, to a very delicate drum beat._
“_Your_
Dandelion beauty,
_Your_
Cherry-blossom beauty,
_Your_
Apple-blossom beauty,
I will dance as I can,
O
You rag time lady,
O
You jazz dancing lady,
O
You blues-singing lady,”
_Thinks_ the blues-singing man.
“Your
Grace and slightness,
And your fragrant whiteness,
Make me see the bending
Of an apple-blossom bough.
_You_
Are a fairy,
Yet a jump-jazz dancer,
And your heart
Is a robin,
Singing, making merry
With the apple-flowers now.”
See him kneel and canter
And smirk and banter,
And essay her heart
While the gourd horns blow.
For he is her lover
_And_
Her dancing partner,
In the blues he made
Called “The Apple Blossom Snow.”
She does her duty
No more
Than her duty,
Yet the packed house cheers
To the gallery rim.
Her young scorn fires them,
Its pep inspires them,
They watch her lover
And envy him.
He does not fathom
What her heart has in keeping
Till that last circus leaping
Takes all by surprise.
Then he catches her softly,
Saves her gently,
And a mood for his soul
Lights her pansy eyes.
Then
She steps rare measures.
Her eyes are treasures.
Brave truth shines out
From her young-witch glance.
From the velvety shade,
Ah, the thoughts of the maid.
Relenting glory,
Unveiled by chance.
Though soon thereafter
She hides in laughter,
And flouts all his loving,
He will dance as he can,
As he can,
Like a man,
With his jazz dancing wonder,
With his pansy blossom wonder,
With his apple blossom wonder,
With his rag time lady,
The
Rag
Time
Man.
[Sidenote: _Grand finale of jazz music, like the fall of a pile of
dishes in the kitchen._]
THE DANIEL JAZZ
_Let the leader train the audience to roar like lions, and to
join in the refrain “Go chain the lions down,” before he begins
to lead them in this jazz._
[Sidenote: _Beginning with a strain of “Dixie.”_]
Darius the Mede was a king and a wonder.
His eye was proud, and his voice was thunder.
He kept bad lions in a monstrous den.
He fed up the lions on Christian men.
[Sidenote: _With a touch of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”_]
Daniel was the chief hired man of the land.
He stirred up the jazz in the palace band.
He whitewashed the cellar. He shovelled in the coal.
And Daniel kept a-praying:--“Lord save my soul.”
Daniel kept a-praying:--“Lord save my soul.”
Daniel kept a-praying:--“Lord save my soul.”
Daniel was the butler, swagger and swell.
He ran up stairs. He answered the bell.
And _he_ would let in whoever came a-calling:--
Saints so holy, scamps so appalling.
“Old man Ahab leaves his card.
Elisha and the bears are a-waiting in the yard.
Here comes Pharaoh and his snakes a-calling.
Here comes Cain and his wife a-calling.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego for tea.
Here comes Jonah and the whale,
And the _Sea_!
Here comes St. Peter and his fishing pole.
Here comes Judas and his silver a-calling.
Here comes old Beelzebub a-calling.”
And Daniel kept a-praying:--“Lord save my soul.”
Daniel kept a-praying:--“Lord save my soul.”
Daniel kept a-praying:--“Lord save my soul.”
His sweetheart and his mother were Christian and meek.
They washed and ironed for Darius every week.
One Thursday he met them at the door:--
Paid them as usual, but acted sore.
He said:--“Your Daniel is a dead little pigeon.
He’s a good hard worker, but he talks religion.”
And he showed them Daniel in the lion’s cage.
Daniel standing quietly, the lions in a rage.
His good old mother cried:--
“Lord save him.”
And Daniel’s tender sweetheart cried:--
“Lord save him.”
And she was a golden lily in the dew.
And she was as sweet as an apple on the tree
And she was as fine as a melon in the corn-field,
Gliding and lovely as a ship on the sea,
Gliding and lovely as a ship on the sea.
And she prayed to the Lord:--
“_Send_ Gabriel. _Send_ Gabriel.”
King Darius said to the lions:--
“Bite Daniel. Bite Daniel.
Bite him. Bite him. Bite him!”
[Sidenote: _Here the audience roars with the leader._]
Thus roared the lions:--
“We want Daniel, Daniel, Daniel,
We want Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”
[Sidenote: _The audience sings this with the leader, to the old negro
tune._]
And Daniel did not frown,
Daniel did not cry.
He kept on looking at the sky.
And the Lord said to Gabriel:--
“Go chain the lions down,
Go chain the lions down.
Go chain the lions down.
Go chain the lions down.”
And _Gabriel_ chained the lions,
And _Gabriel_ chained the lions,
And _Gabriel_ chained the lions,
And Daniel got out of the den,
And Daniel got out of the den,
And Daniel got out of the den.
And Darius said:--“You’re a Christian child,”
Darius said:--“You’re a Christian child,”
Darius said:--“You’re a Christian child,”
And gave him his job again,
And gave him his job again,
And gave him his job again.
WHEN PETER JACKSON PREACHED IN THE OLD CHURCH
_To be sung to the tune of the old Negro Spiritual “Every time
I feel the spirit moving in my heart I’ll pray.”_
Peter Jackson was a-preaching
And the house was still as snow.
He whispered of repentance
And the lights were dim and low
And were almost out
When he gave the first shout:
“Arise, arise,
Cry out your eyes.”
And we mourned all our terrible sins away.
Clean, clean away.
Then we marched around, around,
And sang with a wonderful sound:--
“Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I’ll pray.
Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I’ll pray.”
And we fell by the altar
And fell by the aisle,
And found our Savior
In just a little while,
We all found Jesus at the break of the day,
We all found Jesus at the break of the day.
Blessed Jesus,
Blessed Jesus.
THE CONSCIENTIOUS DEACON
_A song to be syncopated as you please_
Black cats, grey cats, green cats miau--
Chasing the deacon who stole the cow.
He runs and tumbles, he tumbles and runs.
He sees big white men with dogs and guns.
He falls down flat. He turns to stare--
No cats, no dogs, and no men there.
But black shadows, grey shadows, green shadows come.
The wind says, “Miau!” and the rain says, “Hum!”
He goes straight home. He dreams all night.
He howls. He puts his wife in a fright.
Black devils, grey devils, green devils shine--
Yes, by Sambo,
And the fire looks fine!
Cat devils, dog devils, cow devils grin--
Yes, by Sambo,
And the fire rolls in.
And so, next day, to avoid the worst--
He takes that cow
Where he found her first.
DAVY JONES’ DOOR-BELL
_A Chant for Boys with Manly Voices._
_Every line sung one step deeper than the line preceding._
Any sky-bird sings,
“_Ring, ring!_”
Any church-chime calls,
“_Dong ding!_”
Any cannon says,
“_Boom bang!_”
Any whirlwind says,
“_Whing whang!_”
The bell-buoy hums and roars,
“_Ding dong!_”
And way down deep,
Where fishes throng,
By Davy Jones’ big deep-sea door,
Shaking the ocean’s flowery floor,
His door-bell booms
“_Dong dong,
Dong dong_,”
Deep, deep down,
“_Clang boom,
Boom dong,
Boom dong,
Boom dong!_”
THE SEA SERPENT CHANTEY
I
There’s a snake on the western wave
And his crest is red.
He is long as a city street,
And he eats the dead.
There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea
Where the snake goes down.
And he waits in the bottom of the sea
For the men that drown.
[Sidenote: _Let the audience join in the chorus._]
Chorus:--
This is the voice of the sand
(The sailors understand)
“There is far more sea than sand,
There is far more sea than land. Yo ... ho, yo ... ho.”
II
He waits by the door of his cave
While the ages moan.
He cracks the ribs of the ships
With his teeth of stone.
In his gizzard deep and long
Much treasure lies.
Oh, the pearls and the Spanish gold....
And the idols’ eyes....
Oh, the totem poles ... the skulls ...
The altars cold ...
The wedding rings, the dice ...
The buoy bells old.
Chorus:--This is the voice, etc.
III
Dive, mermaids, with sharp swords
And cut him through,
And bring us the idols’ eyes
And the red gold too.
Lower the grappling hooks
Good pirate men
And drag him up by the tongue
From his deep wet den.
We will sail to the end of the world,
We will nail his hide
To the main mast of the moon
In the evening tide.
Chorus:--This is the voice, etc.
IV
Or will you let him live,
The deep-sea thing,
With the wrecks of all the world
In a black wide ring
By the hole in the bottom of the sea
Where the snake goes down,
Where he waits in the bottom of the sea
For the men that drown?
Chorus:--This is the voice, etc.
THE LITTLE TURTLE
_A Recitation for Martha Wakefield, Three Years Old_
There was a little turtle.
He lived in a box.
He swam in a puddle.
He climbed on the rocks.
He snapped at a musquito.
He snapped at a flea.
He snapped at a minnow.
And he snapped at me.
He caught the musquito.
He caught the flea.
He caught the minnow.
But he didn’t catch me.
THIRD SECTION
COBWEBS AND CABLES
THE SCIENTIFIC ASPIRATION
Would that the dry hot wind called Science came,
Forerunner of a higher mystic day,
Though vile machine-made commerce clear the way--
Though nature losing shame should lose her veil,
And ghosts of buried angel-warriors wail
The fall of Heaven, and the relentless Sun
Smile on, as Abraham’s God forever dies--
Lord, give us Darwin’s eyes!
THE VISIT TO MAB
When glad vacation time began
A snail-king said to his dear spouse,
“Come, let us lock our birch-bark house
And visit some important man.
“Each summer we have hoped to go
To see the sultan Gingerbread
Who wears chopped citron on his head
And currant love-locks in a row.
“And see his vizier Chocolate Bill
And Popcorn Man, his pale young priest.
They live twelve inches to the east
Behind the lofty brown-bread hill.”
His wife said: “Simple elegance
Is what we want. It is the mode
To take the little western road
To where the blue-grass fairies dance.
“I think the queen will recognize
Our atmosphere of wealth and ease.
My steel-grey shell is sure to please,
And she will fear your fiery eyes.”
And so they visited proud Mab.
The firs were laughing overhead,
The chattering roses burned deep-red.
The snails were queer and dumb and drab.
The contrast made them quite the thing.
A setting spells success at times.
Mab gave the queen a book of rhymes.
A tissue-cap she gave the king,
Like caps the children wear for sport.
And vainer than he well could say
He called gay Mab his “pride and stay,”
With pompous speeches to the court.
They journeyed home, made young indeed,
But opening the book of song
Each poem looked so deep and long
They could not bear to start to read.
THE SONG OF THE STURDY SNAILS
Gristly bare-bone fingers
On my window-pane--
The drumbeat of a ghost
Louder than the rain!
Oh frail, storm-shaken hut--
No candle, not a spark
Of fire within the grate.
Oh the lonely dark!
Trembling by the window
I watched the lightning flash
And saw the little villains
Upon the outer sash
And other small musicians
Upon the window-pane--
Garden snails, a-dragging
Their shells amid the rain!
The thunder blew away.
My happiness began.
Over the dripping darkness
Rills of moonlight ran.
In the silence rich
The scratching of the shells
Became a crooning music
A lazy peal of bells.
So fearless in the night
My sluggard brothers bold!
Your fancies swift and glowing;
Your footsteps slow and cold!
My happy beggar-brothers
Tuning all together,
Playing on the pane
Praise of stormy weather!
Upon a ragged pillow
At last I laid my head
And watched the sparkling window
And the wan light on my bed.
Through the glass came flying
Dream snails, with leafy wings--
Glided on the moonbeams--
And all the snails were kings!
With crowns of pollen yellow
And eyes of firefly gold
Behold--to crooning music
Their coiling wings unrolled!
These tiny kings I saw
Reigning over white
Bisque jars of fairy flowers
In sturdy proud delight.
These jars in fairyland
Await good snails that keep
Vigils on the windows
Of beggars fast asleep.
ANOTHER WORD ON THE SCIENTIFIC ASPIRATION
“There’s machinery in the butterfly.
There’s a mainspring to the bee.
There’s hydraulics to a daisy
And contraptions to a tree.
“If we could see the birdie
That makes the chirping sound
With psycho-analytic eyes,
And x ray, scientific eyes,
We could see the wheels go round.”
_And I hope all men
Who think like this
Will soon lie
Underground._
DANCING FOR A PRIZE
Three fairies by the Sangamon
Were dancing for a prize.
The rascals were alike indeed
As they danced with drooping eyes.
I gave the magic acorn
To the one I loved the best,
The imp that made me think of her
My heart’s eternal guest,
My lady of the tea-rose, my lady far away,
Queen of the fleets of No-Man’s-Land
That sail to old Cathay.
How did the trifler hint of her?
Ah, when the dance was done
They begged me for the acorn,
Laughing every one.
Two had eyes of midnight,
And one had golden eyes,
And I gave the golden acorn
To the scamp with golden eyes.
Confessor Dandelion,
My priest so grey and wise
Whispered when I gave it
To the girl with golden eyes:
“She is like your Queen of Glory
On China’s holy strand
Who drove the coiling dragons
Like doves before her hand.”
COLD SUNBEAMS
The Question:
“Tell me, where do fairy queens
Find their bridal veils?”
The Answer:
“If you were now a fairy queen
Then I, your faithless page and bold
Would win the realm by winning you.
Your veil would be transparent gold
White magic spiders wove for you
At cold grey dawn, from sunbeams cold
While robins sang amid the dew.”
FOR ALL WHO EVER SENT LACE VALENTINES
The little-boy lover
And little-girl lover
Met the first time
At the house of a friend.
And great the respect
Of the little-boy lover.
The awe and the fear of her
Stayed to the end.
The little girl chattered
Incessantly chattered,
Hardly would look
When he tried to be nice.
But deeply she trembled
The little-girl lover,
Eaten with flame
While she tried to be ice.
The lion of loving
The terrible lion
Woke in the two
Long before they could wed.
The world said: “Child hearts
You must keep till the summer.
It is not allowed
That your hearts should be red.”
If only a wizard
A kindly grey wizard
Had built them a house
In a cave underground.
With an emerald door,
And honey to eat!
But it seemed that no wizard
Was waiting around.
Oh children with fancies,
The rarest of notions,
The rarest of passions
And hopes here below!
Many a child,
His young heart too timid
Has fled from his princess
No other to know.
I have seen them with faces
Like books out of Heaven,
With messages there
The harsh world should read,
The lions and roses and lilies of love,
Its tender, mystic, tyrannical need.
Were I god of the village
My servants should mate them.
Were I priest of the church
I would set them apart.
If the wide state were mine
It should live for such darlings,
And hedge with all shelter
The child-wedded heart.
MY LADY IS COMPARED TO A YOUNG TREE
When I see a young tree
In its white beginning,
With white leaves
And white buds
Barely tipped with green,
In the April weather,
In the weeping sunshine--
Then I see my lady,
My democratic queen,
Standing free and equal
With the youngest woodland sapling
Swaying, singing in the wind,
Delicate and white:
Soul so near to blossom,
Fragile, strong as death;
A kiss from far off Eden,
A flash of Judgment’s trumpet--
April’s breath.
TO EVE, MAN’S DREAM OF WIFEHOOD AS DESCRIBED BY MILTON
Darling of Milton--when that marble man
Saw you in shadow, coming from God’s hand
Serene and young, did he not chant for you
Praises more quaint than he could understand?
“To justify the ways of God to man”--
So, self-deceived, his printed purpose runs.
His love for you is the true key to him,
And Uriel and Michael were your sons.
Your bosom nurtured his Urania.
Your meek voice, piercing through his midnight sleep
Shook him far more than silver chariot wheels
Or rattling shields, or trumpets of the deep.
Titan and lover, could he be content
With Eden’s narrow setting for your spell?
You wound soft arms around his brows. He smiled
And grimly for your home built Heaven and Hell.
That was his posy. A strange gift, indeed.
We bring you what we can, not what is fit.
Eve, dream of wifehood! Each man in his way
Serves you with chants according to his wit.
A KIND OF SCORN
You do not know my pride
Or the storm of scorn I ride.
I am too proud to kiss you and leave you
Without wonders
Spreading round you like flame.
I am too proud to leave you
Without love
Haunting your very name:
Until you bear the Grail
Above your head in splendor
O child, dear and pale.
I am too proud to leave you
Though we part forevermore
Till all your thoughts
Go up toward Glory’s door.
Oh, I am but a sinner proud and poor,
Utterly without merit
To help you climb in wonder
A stair toward Heaven’s door--
Except that I have prayed my God,
And He will give the Grail,
And you will mourn no longer,
Beset, confused, and pale.
And God will lift you far on high,
The while I pray and pray
Until the hour I die.
The effectual fervent prayer availeth much.
And my first prayer ascends this proud harsh day.
HARPS IN HEAVEN
I will bring you great harps in Heaven,
Made of giant shells
From the jasper sea.
With a thousand burnt up years behind,
What then of the gulf from you to me?
It will be but the width of a thread,
Or the narrowest leaf of our sheltering tree.
You dare not refuse my harps in Heaven.
Or angels will mock you, and turn away.
Or with angel wit,
Will praise your eyes,
And your pure Greek lips, and bid you play,
And sing of the love from them to you,
And then of my poor flaming heart
In the far off earth, when the years were new.
I will bring you such harps in Heaven
That they will shake at your touch and breath,
Whose threads are rainbows,
Seventy times seven,
Whose voice is life, and silence death.
THE CELESTIAL CIRCUS
In Heaven, if not on earth,
You and I will be dancing.
I will whirl you over my head,
A torch and a flag and a bird,
A hawk that loves my shoulder,
A dove with plumes outspread.
We will whirl for God when the trumpets
Speak the millennial word.
We will howl in praise of God,
Dervish and young cyclone.
We will ride in the joy of God
On circus horses white.
Your feet will be white lightning,
Your spangles white and regal,
We will leap from the horses’ backs
To the cliffs of day and night.
We will have our rest in the pits of sleep
When the darkness heaps upon us,
And buries us for æons
Till we rise like grass in the spring.
We will come like dandelions,
Like buttercups and crocuses,
And all the winter of our sleep
But make us storm and sing.
We will tumble like swift foam
On the wave-crests of old ghostland,
And dance on the crafts of doom,
And wrestle on the moon.
And Saturn and his triple ring
Will be our tinsel circus,
Till all sad wraiths of yesterday
With the stars rejoice and croon.
O dancer, love undying,
My soul, my swan, my eagle,
The first of our million dancing years
Dawns, dawns soon.
THE FIRE-LADDIE, LOVE
The door has a bolt.
The window a grate.
O friend we are trapped
In the factory, Fate.
The flames pierce the ceiling.
The brands heap the floor.
But listen, dear heart:
A song at the door!
The forcing of bolts,
The hewing of oak!
A sword breaks the lock
With one cleaving stroke.
Naked and fair
Unscathed and wild
Behold he comes swiftly,
An elfin-eyed child.
The fire-laddie, _Love_,
Is our hero this night,
As he walks on the embers
His plumes are cloud white.
He sings of the lightning
And snow of desire,
His step parts the veil
Of the factory fire.
Oh his chubby child hands,
Oh his long curls agleam,
From out their soft tossing
Comes thunder and dream.
Our fire-laddie, Love,
At the last moment here,
To bear us away
To a road without fear,
To the dark, to the wind,
To the mist, to the dawn,
Where the lilac blooms nod
By the rain renewed lawn.
To a land of deep knowledge
Our tired feet are led,
While the stars of new morning
Still glint overhead.
Sweet Love walks between us
With silences long.
His step is the music.
The day is the song.
FOURTH SECTION
RHYMES CONCERNING THE LATE WORLD WAR AND THE NEXT WAR
IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND JOYCE KILMER, POET AND SOLDIER
_Written Armistice Day, November eleventh, 1918_
I hear a thousand chimes,
I hear ten thousand chimes,
I hear a million chimes
In Heaven.
I see a thousand bells,
I see ten thousand bells,
I see a million bells
In Heaven.
Listen, friends and companions.
Through the deep heart,
Sweetly they toll.
I hear the chimes
Of tomorrow ring,
The azure bells
Of eternal love....
I see the chimes
Of tomorrow swing:
On unseen ropes
They gleam above.
Rejoice, friends and companions.
Through the deep heart
Sweetly they toll.
They shake the sky
They blaze and sing.
They fill the air
Like larks a-wing,
Like storm-clouds
Turned to blue-bell flowers.
Like Spring gone mad,
Like stars in showers.
Join the song,
Friends and companions.
Through the deep heart
Sweetly they toll.
And some are near,
And touch my hand,
Small whispering blooms
From Beulah Land.
Giants afar
Still touch the sky,
Still give their giant
Battle-cry.
Join hands, friends and companions.
Through the deep heart
Sweetly they toll.
And every bell
Is voice and breath
Of a spirit
Who has conquered death,
In this great war
Has given all,
Like Kilmer
Heard the hero-call.
Join hands,
Poets,
Friends,
Companions.
Through the deep heart
Sweetly they toll!
THE TIGER ON PARADE
The Sparrow and the Robin on a toot
Drunk on honey-dew and violet’s breath
Came knocking at the brazen bars of Death.
And Death, no other than a tiger caged,
In a street parade that had no ending,
Roared at them and clawed at them and raged--
Whose chirping was the height of their offending.
His paws too big--their fluttering bodies small
Escaped unscathed above the City Hall.
They learned new dances, scattering birdy laughter,
And filled again their throats with honey-dew.
A Maltese kitten killed them, two days after.
But they had had their fill. It was enough:--
Had quarreled, made up, on many a lilac swayed,
Darted through sunny thunder-clouds and rainbows,
High above that tiger on parade.
THE FEVER CALLED WAR
Love and Kindness,
Two sad shadows
Over the old nations,
Bigger than the world,
Mists above a grave!
Says Love, the shadow
To Kindness the shadow:--
“I weep for the children
No miracle will save.
All the little children
Are down with the fever,
Thousands upon thousands,
Blind and deaf and mad.
Their fathers are all dead,
And the same raging fever
Is burning up the children,
The babes that once were glad.”
STANZAS IN JUST THE RIGHT TONE FOR THE SPIRITED GENTLEMEN WHO WOULD
CONQUER MEXICO
ALEXANDER
Would I might waken in you Alexander,
Murdering the nations wickedly,
Flooding his time with blood remorselessly,
Sowing new Empires, where the Athenian light,
Knowledge and music, slay the Asian night,
And men behold Apollo in the sun.
God make us splendid, though by grievous wrong.
God make us fierce and strong.
MOHAMMED
Would that on horses swifter than desire
We rode behind Mohammed ’round the zones
With swords unceasing, sowing fields of bones,
Till New America, ancient Mizraim,
Cry: “Allah is the God of Abraham.”
God make our host relentless as the sun,
Each soul your spear, your banner and your slave,
God help us to be brave.
NAPOLEON
Would that the cold adventurous Corsican
Woke with new hope of glory, strong from sleep,
Instructed how to conquer and to keep
More justly, having dreamed awhile, yea crowned
With shining flowers, God-given; while the sound
Of singing continents, following the sun,
Calls freeborn men to guard Napoleon’s throne
Who makes the eternal hopes of man his own.
THE MODEST JAZZ-BIRD
The Jazz-bird sings a barnyard song--
A cock-a-doodle bray,
A jingle-bells, a boiler works,
A he-man’s roundelay.
The eagle said, “My noisy son,
I send you out to fight!”
So the youngster spread his sunflower wings
And roared with all his might.
His headlight eyes went flashing
From Oregon to Maine;
And the land was dark with airships
In the darting Jazz-bird’s train.
Crossing the howling ocean,
His bell-mouth shook the sky;
And the Yankees in the trenches
Gave back the hue and cry.
And Europe had not heard the like--
And Germany went down!
The fowl of steel with clashing claws
Tore off the Kaiser’s crown.
When the statue of Andrew Jackson before the White House in Washington
is removed, America is doomed. The nobler days of America’s innocence,
in which it was set up, always have a special tang for those who are
tasty. But this is not all. It is only the America that has the courage
of her complete past that can hold up her head in the world of the
artists, priests and sages. It is for us to put the iron dog and deer
back upon the lawn, the John Rogers group back into the parlor, and get
new inspiration from these and from Andrew Jackson ramping in bronze
replica in New Orleans, Nashville and Washington, and add to them a
sense of humor, till it becomes a sense of beauty that will resist the
merely dulcet and affettuoso.
Please read Lorado Taft’s _History of American Sculpture_, pages
123-127, with these matters in mind. I quote a few bits:
“... The maker of the first equestrian statue in the history of
American sculpture: Clark Mills.... Never having seen General Jackson
or an equestrian statue, he felt himself incompetent ... the incident,
however, made an impression on his mind, and he reflected sufficiently
to produce a design which was the very one subsequently executed....
Congress appropriated the old cannon captured by General Jackson....
Having no notion, nor even suspicion of a dignified sculptural
treatment of a theme, the clever carpenter felt, nevertheless, the need
of a feature.... He built a colossal horse, adroitly balanced on the
hind legs, and America gazed with bated breath. Nobody knows or cares
whether the rider looks like Jackson or not.
“The extraordinary pose of the horse absorbs all attention, all
admiration. There may be some subconscious feeling of respect for a
rider who holds on so well....”
THE STATUE OF OLD ANDREW JACKSON
_Written while America was in the midst of the war with Germany,
August, 1918_
Andrew Jackson was eight feet tall.
His arm was a hickory limb and a maul.
His sword was so long he dragged it on the ground.
Every friend was an equal. Every foe was a hound.
Andrew Jackson was a Democrat,
Defying kings in his old cocked hat.
His vast steed rocked like a hobby horse.
But he sat straight up. He held his course.
He licked the British at Noo Orleens;
Beat them out of their elegant jeans.
He piled the cotton-bales twenty feet high,
And he snorted “freedom,” and it flashed from his eye.
And the American Eagle swooped through the air,
And cheered when he heard the Jackson swear:--
“By the Eternal, let them come.
Sound Yankee Doodle. Let the bullets hum.”
And his wild men, straight from the woods, fought on
Till the British fops were dead and gone.
And now Old Andrew Jackson fights
To set the sad big world to rights.
He joins the British and the French.
He cheers up the Italian trench.
He’s making Democrats of these,
And freedom’s sons of Japanese.
His hobby horse will gallop on
Till all the infernal Huns are gone.
Yes,
Yes,
Yes!
By the Eternal!
Old Andrew Jackson!
SEW THE FLAGS TOGETHER
Great wave of youth, ere you be spent,
Sweep over every monument
Of caste, smash every high imperial wall
That stands against the new World State,
And overwhelm each ravening hate,
And heal, and make blood-brothers of us all.
Nor let your clamor cease
Till ballots conquer guns.
Drum on for the world’s peace
Till the Tory power is gone.
Envenomed lame old age
Is not our heritage,
But springtime’s vast release, and flaming dawn.
Peasants, rise in splendor
And your accounting render
Ere the lords unnerve your hand!
Sew the flags together.
Do not tear them down.
Hurl the worlds together.
Dethrone the wallowing monster
And the clown.
Resolving:--
“Only that shall grow
In Balkan furrow, Chinese row,
That blooms, and is perpetually young.”
That only be held fine and dear
That brings heart-wisdom year by year
And puts this thrilling word upon the tongue:
“The United States of Europe, Asia, and the World.”
“Youth will be served,” now let us cry.
Hurl the referendum.
Your fathers, five long years ago,
Resolved to strike, too late.
Now
Sun-crowned crowds
Innumerable,
Of boys and girls
Imperial,
With your patchwork flag of brotherhood
On high,
With every silk
In one flower-banner whirled--
Rise,
Citizens of one tremendous state,
The United States of Europe, Asia, and the World.
The dawn is rose-drest and impearled.
The guards of privilege are spent.
The blood-fed captains nod.
So Saxon, Slav, French, German,
Rise,
Yankee, Chinese, Japanese,
All the lands, all the seas,
With the blazing rainbow flag unfurled,
Rise, rise,
Take the sick dragons by surprise,
Highly establish,
In the name of God,
The United States of Europe, Asia, and the World.
Written for William Stanley Braithwaite’s Victory Anthology
issued at once, after Armistice Day, November, 1918.
JUSTINIAN
(_The Tory Reply_)
Nay, let us have the marble peace of Rome,
Recorded in the Code Justinian,
Till Pagan Justice shelters man from man.
Fanatics snarl like mongrel dogs; the code
Will build each custom like a Roman Road,
Direct as daylight, clear-eyed as the sun.
God grant all crazy world-disturbers cease.
God give us honest peace.
THE VOICE OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
I saw St. Francis by a stream
Washing his wounds that bled.
The aspens quivered overhead.
The silver doves flew round.
Weeping and sore dismayed
“Peace, peace,” St. Francis prayed.
But the soft doves quickly fled.
Carrion crows flew round.
An earthquake rocked the ground.
“War, war,” the west wind said.
IN WHICH ROOSEVELT IS COMPARED TO SAUL
_Written and published in 1913, and republished five years
later, in The Boston Transcript, on the death of Roosevelt._
Where is David?... Oh God’s people
Saul has passed, the good and great.
Mourn for Saul, the first anointed,
Head and shoulders o’er the state.
He was found among the prophets:
Judge and monarch, merged in one.
But the wars of Saul are ended,
And the works of Saul are done.
Where is David, ruddy shepherd,
God’s boy-king for Israel?
Mystic, ardent, dowered with beauty,
Singing where still waters dwell?
Prophet, find that destined minstrel
Wandering on the range today,
Driving sheep, and crooning softly
Psalms that cannot pass away.
“David waits,” the prophet answers,
“In a black, notorious den,
In a cave upon the border,
With four hundred outlaw men.
“He is fair and loved of women,
Mighty hearted, born to sing:
Thieving, weeping, erring, praying,
Radiant, royal rebel-king.
“He will come with harp and psaltry,
Quell his troop of convict swine,
Quell his mad-dog roaring rascals,
Witching them with tunes divine.
“They will ram the walls of Zion,
They will win us Salem hill,
All for David, shepherd David,
Singing like a mountain rill.”
HAIL TO THE SONS OF ROOSEVELT
“_Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came
forth sweetness._”--_Samson’s riddle._
There is no name for brother
Like the name of Jonathan
The son of Saul.
And so we greet you all:
The sons of Roosevelt--
The sons of Saul.
Four brother Jonathans went out to battle.
Let every Yankee poet sing their praise
Through all the days--
What David sang of Saul
And Jonathan, beloved more than all.
God grant such sons, begot of our young men,
To make each generation glad again.
Let sons of Saul be springing up again:
Out of the eater, fire and power again.
From the lost lion, honey for all men.
I hear the sacred Rocky Mountains call,
I hear the Mississippi Jordan call:
“_Stand up, America, and praise them all,
Living and dead, the fine young sons of Saul!_”
THE SPACIOUS DAYS OF ROOSEVELT
These were the spacious days of Roosevelt.
Would that among you chiefs like him arose
To win the wrath of our united foes,
To chain King Mammon in the donjon-keep,
To rouse our godly citizens that sleep
Till as one soul, we shout up to the sun
The battle-yell of freedom and the right--
“Lord, let good men unite.”
Nay, I would have you lonely and despised.
Statesmen whom only statesmen understand,
Artists whom only artists can command,
Sages whom all but sages scorn, whose fame
Dies down in lies, in synonyms for shame
With the best populace beneath the sun.
God give us tasks that martyrs can revere,
Still too much hated to be whispered here.
Would we might drink, with knowledge high and kind
The hemlock cup of Socrates the king,
Knowing right well we know not anything,
With full life done, bowing before the law,
Binding young thinkers’ hearts with loyal awe,
And fealty fixed as the ever-enduring sun--
God let us live, seeking the highest light,
God help us die aright.
Nay, I would have you grand, and still forgotten,
Hid like the stars at noon, as he who set
The Egyptian magic of man’s alphabet;
Or that far Coptic, first to dream in pain
That dauntless souls cannot by death be slain--
Conquering for all men then, the fearful grave.
God keep us hid, yet vaster far than death.
God help us to be brave.
FIFTH SECTION
RHYMES OF THE MIDDLE WEST AND SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS
WHEN THE MISSISSIPPI FLOWED IN INDIANA
_Inscribed to Bruce Campbell, who read_ Tom Sawyer _with me in the old
house_
Beneath Time’s roaring cannon
Many walls fall down.
But though the guns break every stone,
Level every town:--
Within our Grandma’s old front hall
Some wonders flourish yet:--
The Pavement of Verona,
Where stands young Juliet,
The roof of Blue-beard’s palace,
And Kublai Khan’s wild ground,
The cave of young Aladdin,
Where the jewel-flowers were found,
And the garden of old Sparta
Where little Helen played,
The grotto of Miranda
That Prospero arrayed,
And the cave, by the Mississippi,
Where Becky Thatcher strayed.
On that Indiana stairway
Gleams Cinderella’s shoe.
Upon that mighty mountainside
Walks Snow-white in the dew.
Upon that grassy hillside
Trips shining Nicolette:--
That stairway of remembrance
Time’s cannon will not get--
That chattering slope of glory
Our little cousins made,
That hill by the Mississippi
Where Becky Thatcher strayed.
Spring beauties on that cliffside,
Love in the air,
While the soul’s deep Mississippi
Sweeps on, forever fair.
And he who enters in the cave,
Nothing shall make afraid,
The cave by the Mississippi
Where Tom and Becky strayed.
THE FAIRY FROM THE APPLE-SEED
Oh apple-seed I planted in a silly shallow place
In a bowl of wrought silver, with Sangamon earth within it,
Oh baby tree that came, without an apple on it,
A tree that grew a tiny height, but thickened on apace,
With bossy glossy arms, and leaves of trembling lace.
One night the trunk was rent, and the heavy bowl rocked round,
The boughs were bending here and there, with a curious locust sound,
And a tiny dryad came, from out the doll tree,
And held the boughs in ivory hands,
And waved her black hair round,
And climbed, and ate with merry words
The sudden fruit it bore.
And in the leaves she hides and sings
And guards my study door.
She guards it like a watchdog true
And robbers run away.
Her eyes are lifted spears all night,
But dove-eyes in the day.
And she is stranger, stronger
Than the funny human race.
Lovelier her form, and holier her face.
She feeds me flowers and fruit
With a quaint grace.
She dresses in the apple-leaves
As delicate as lace.
This girl that came from Sangamon earth
In a bowl of silver bright
From an apple-seed I planted in a silly shallow place.
A HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN
Guns salute, and crows and pigeons fly,
Bronzed, Homeric bards go striding by,
Shouting “Glory” amid the cannonade:--
It is the cross-roads
Resurrection
Parade.
Actors, craftsmen, builders, join the throng,
Painters, sculptors, florists tramp along,
Farm-boys prance, in tinsel, tin and jade:--
It is the cross-roads
Love and Laughter
Crusade.
The sun is blazing big as all the sky,
The mustard-plant with the sunflower climbing high,
With the Indian corn in fiery plumes arrayed:--
It is the cross-roads
Love and Beauty
Crusade.
Free and proud and mellow jamboree,
Roar and foam upon the prairie sea,
Tom turkeys sing the sun a serenade:--
It is the cross-roads
Resurrection
Parade.
Our sweethearts dance, with wands as white as milk,
With veils of gold and robes of silver silk,
Their caps in velvet pansy-patterns made:--
It is the cross-roads
Resurrection
Parade.
Wandering ’round the shrines we understand,
Waving oak-boughs cheap and close at hand,
And field-flowers fair, for which no man has paid:--
It is the cross-roads
Love and Beauty
Crusade.
Hieroglyphic marchers here we bring.
Rich inscriptions strut and talk and sing.
A scroll to read, a picture-word brigade:--
It is the cross-roads
Love and Laughter
Crusade.
Swans for symbols deck the banners rare,
Mighty acorn-signs command the air,
For hearts of oak, by flying beauty swayed:--
It is the cross-roads
Resurrection
Parade.
The flags are big, like rainbows flashing ’round,
They spread like sails, and lift us from the ground,
Star-born ships, that have come in masquerade:--
It is the cross-roads
Resurrection
Parade.
THE DREAM OF ALL THE SPRINGFIELD WRITERS
I’ll haunt this town, though gone the maids and men,
The darling few, my friends and loves today.
My ghost returns, bearing a great sword-pen
When far off children of their children play.
That pen will drip with moonlight and with fire.
I’ll write upon the church-doors and the walls.
And reading there, young hearts shall leap the higher
Though drunk already with their own love-calls.
Still led of love and arm in arm, strange gold
Shall find in tracing the far-speeding track
The dauntless war-cries that my sword-pen bold
Shall carve on terraces and tree-trunks black--
On tree-trunks black beneath the blossoms white:--
Just as the phosphorent merman, bound for home
Jewels his fire-path in the tides at night
While hurrying sea-babes follow through the foam.
And in December when the leaves are dead
And the first snow has carpeted the street
While young cheeks flush a healthful Christmas red
And young eyes glisten with youth’s fervor sweet--
My pen shall cut in winter’s snowy floor
Cries that in channelled glory leap and shine,
My Village Gospel, living evermore
Amid rejoicing, loyal friends of mine.
THE SPRINGFIELD OF THE FAR FUTURE
Some day our town will grow old.
“She is wicked and raw,” men say,
“Awkward and brash and profane.”
But the years have a healing way.
The years of God are like bread,
Balm of Gilead and sweet.
And the soul of this little town
Our Father will make complete.
Some day our town will grow old,
Filled with the fullness of time,
Treasure on treasure heaped
Of beauty’s tradition sublime.
Proud and gay and grey
Like Hannah with Samuel blest.
Humble and girlish and white
Like Mary, the manger guest.
Like Mary the manger queen
Bringing the God of Light
Till Christmas is here indeed
And earth has no more of night,
And hosts of Magi come,
The wisest under the sun
Bringing frankincense and praise
For her gift of the Infinite One.
AFTER READING THE SAD STORY OF THE FALL OF BABYLON
Oh Lady, my city, and new flower of the prairie,
What have we to do with this long time ago?
Oh lady love,
Bud of tomorrow,
With eyes that hold the hundred years
Yet to ebb and flow,
And breasts that burn
With great great grandsons
All their valor, all their tears,
A century hence shall know,
What have we to do
With this long time ago?
ALEXANDER CAMPBELL
“The present material universe, yet unrevealed in all its area, in
all its tenantries, in all its riches, beauty and grandeur will be
wholly regenerated. Of this fact we have full assurance since He that
now sits upon the throne of the Universe has pledged His word for it,
saying: ‘Behold I will create all things new,’ consequently, ‘new
heavens, new earth,’ consequently, new tenantries, new employments,
new pleasures, new joys, new ecstasies. There is a fullness of joy, a
fullness of glory and a fullness of blessedness of which no living man,
however enlightened, however enlarged, however gifted, ever formed or
entertained one adequate conception.”
The above is the closing paragraph in Alexander Campbell’s last essay
in the _Millennial Harbinger_, which he had edited thirty-five years.
This paragraph appeared November, 1865, four months before his death.
I--MY FATHERS CAME FROM KENTUCKY
I was born in Illinois,--
Have lived there many days.
And I have Northern words,
And thoughts,
And ways.
But my great grandfathers came
To the west with Daniel Boone,
And taught his babes to read,
And heard the red-bird’s tune;
And heard the turkey’s call,
And stilled the panther’s cry,
And rolled on the blue-grass hills,
And looked God in the eye.
And feud and Hell were theirs;
Love, like the moon’s desire,
Love like a burning mine,
Love like rifle-fire.
I tell tales out of school
Till these Yankees hate my style.
Why should the young cad cry,
Shout with joy for a mile?
Why do I faint with love
Till the prairies dip and reel?
My heart is a kicking horse
Shod with Kentucky steel.
No drop of my blood from north
Of Mason and Dixon’s line.
And this racer in my breast
Tears my ribs for a sign.
But I ran in Kentucky hills
Last week. They were hearth and home....
And the church at Grassy Springs,
Under the red-bird’s wings
Was peace and honeycomb.
II--WRITTEN IN A YEAR WHEN MANY OF MY PEOPLE DIED
I have begun to count my dead.
They wave green branches
Around my head,
Put their hands upon my shoulders,
Stand behind me,
Fly above me--
Presences that love me.
They watch me daily,
Murmuring, gravely, gaily,
Praising, reproving, readily.
And every year that company
Grows the greater, steadily.
And every day I count my dead
In robes of sunrise, blue and red.
III--A RHYMED ADDRESS TO ALL RENEGADE CAMPBELLITES, EXHORTING THEM TO
RETURN
I
O prodigal son, O recreant daughter,
When broken by the death of a child
You called for the greybeard Campbellite elder,
Who spoke as of old in the wild.
His voice held echoes of the deep woods of Kentucky.
He towered in apostolic state,
While the portrait of Campbell emerged from the dark:
That genius beautiful and great.
And millennial trumpets poised, half lifted,
Millennial trumpets that wait.
II
Like the woods of old Kentucky
The memories of childhood
Arch up to where gold chariot wheels go ringing,
To where the precious airs are terraces and roadways
For witnesses to God, forever singing.
Like Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, the memories of childhood
Go in and in forever underground
To river and fountain of whispering and mystery
And many a haunted hall without a sound.
To Indian hoards and carvings and graveyards unexplored.
To pits so deep a torch turns to a star
Whirling ’round and going down to the deepest rocks of earth,
To the fiery roots of forests brave and far.
III
As I built cob-houses with small cousins on the floor:
(The talk was not meant for me).
Daguerreotypes shone. The back log sizzled
And my grandmother traced the family tree.
Then she swept to the proverbs of Campbell again.
And we glanced at the portrait of that most benign of men
Looking down through the evening gleam
With a bit of Andrew Jackson’s air,
More of Henry Clay
And the statesmen of Thomas Jefferson’s day:
With the face of age,
And the flush of youth,
And that air of going on, forever free.
For once upon a time ...
Long, long ago ...
In the holy forest land
There was a jolly pre-millennial band,
When that text-armed apostle, Alexander Campbell
Held deathless debate with the wicked “infi-del.”
The clearing was a picnic ground.
Squirrels were barking.
The seventeen year locust charged by.
Wild turkeys perched on high.
And millions of wild pigeons
Broke the limbs of trees,
Then shut out the sun, as they swept on their way.
But ah, the wilder dove of God flew down
To bring a secret glory, and to stay,
With the proud hunter-trappers, patriarchs that came
To break bread together and to pray
And oh the music of each living throbbing thing
When Campbell arose,
A pillar of fire,
The great high priest of the Spring.
He stepped from out the Brush Run Meeting House
To make the big woods his cathedrals,
The river his baptismal font,
The rolling clouds his bells,
The storming skies his waterfalls,
His pastures and his wells.
Despite all sternness in his word
Richer grew the rushing blood
Within our fathers’ coldest thought.
Imagination at the flood
Made flowery all they heard.
The deep communion cup
Of the whole South lifted up.
Who were the witnesses, the great cloud of witnesses
With which he was compassed around?
The heroes of faith from the days of Abraham
Stood on that blue-grass ground--
While the battle-ax of thought
Hewed to the bone
That the utmost generation
Till the world was set right
Might have an America their own.
For religion Dionysian
Was far from Campbell’s doctrine.
He preached with faultless logic
An American Millennium:
The social order
Of a realist and farmer
With every neighbor
Within stone wall and border.
And the tongues of flame came down
Almost in spite of him.
And now all but that Pentecost is dim.
IV
I walk the forest by the Daniel Boone trail.
By guide posts quaint.
And the blazes are faint
In the rough old bark
Of silver poplars
And elms once slim,
Now monoliths tall.
I walk the aisle,
The cathedral hall
That is haunted still
With chariots dim,
Whispering still
With debate and call.
I come to you from Campbell.
Turn again, prodigal
Haunted by his name!
Artist, singer, builder,
The forest’s son or daughter!
You, the blasphemer
Will yet know repentance,
And Campbell old and grey
Will lead you to the dream-side
Of a pennyroyal river.
While your proud heart is shaken
Your confession will be taken
And your sins baptized away.
You, statesman-philosopher,
Sage with high conceit
Who speak of revolutions, in long words,
And guide the little world as best you may:
I come to you from Campbell
And say he rides your way
And will wait with you the coming of his day.
His horse still threads the forest,
Though the storm be roaring down....
Campbell enters now your log-house door.
Indeed you make him welcome, after many years,
While the children build cob-houses on the floor.
Let a thousand prophets have their due.
Let each have his boat in the sky.
But you were born for his secular millennium
With the old Kentucky forest blooming like Heaven,
And the red birds flying high.
THE END
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The golden whales of California and other rhymes in the American language" ***
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