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Title: Going-to-the-Sun
Author: Lindsay, Vachel
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Going-to-the-Sun" ***
[Illustration]
GOING-TO-THE-SUN
GOING-TO-THE-SUN
BY
VACHEL LINDSAY
AUTHOR OF “GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH
ENTERS HEAVEN,” “THE CONGO,” ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXIII
[Illustration]
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
[Illustration] CONTENTS
PREFACE 1
WE START FOR THE WATERFALLS 8
GOING-TO-THE-SUN 10
THE MYSTIC ROOSTER OF THE MONTANA SUNRISE 12
THE BIRD CALLED “CURIOSITY” 14
THE THISTLE VINE 16
AND THEY LAUGHED 18
THE FAIRY CIRCUS 20
THE BATTLE-AX OF THE SUN 22
THE CHRISTMAS TREES 24
THE PHEASANT SPEAKS OF HIS BIRTHDAYS 26
THE MYSTIC UNICORN OF THE MOUNTAIN SUNSET 30
JOHNNY APPLESEED STILL FURTHER WEST 34
THE APPLE-BARREL OF JOHNNY APPLESEED 38
THE COMET OF GOING-TO-THE-SUN 40
THE BOAT WITH THE KITE STRING AND THE CELESTIAL
EYES 42
“SO MUCH THE WORSE FOR BOSTON” 50
THE ROCKETS THAT REACHED SATURN 72
MEDITATION 74
THE TRAVELER 76
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 78
SOME BALLOONS GROW ON TREES 80
BABYLON’S GARDENS ARE BURNING 84
IN THE BEAUTY PARLORS 86
A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN 88
OLD JUDGE HOOT OWL 90
PEARLS 92
THE LAND HORSE AND THE SEA HORSE 94
CONCERNING THE MOUSE WITH TWO TAILS 98
WORDS ABOUT AN ANCIENT QUEEN 100
[Illustration]
[Illustration] ILLUSTRATIONS
Elements of Good Tea 1
We Start for the Waterfalls 9
Going-To-The-Sun 11
The Mystic Rooster of the Montana Sunrise 13
The Bird Called “Curiosity” 15
The Thistle Vine 17
And They Laughed (Poppies) 19
The Fairy Circus 21
The Battle-Ax of the Sun 23
The Christmas Trees 25
The Pheasant Speaks of His Birthdays 27
The Mystic Unicorn of the Montana Sunset 31
Johnny Appleseed Still Further West 35
And Fairies Came from Them 37
The Apple-Barrel of Johnny Appleseed 39
The Comet of Going-To-The-Sun 41
The Boat with the Kite String and the Celestial Eyes 43
The Big-Eared Rat of Boston 51
The Boston Mouse 53
The Tower-of-Babel Cactus 55
A Back-Bay Whale 59
The Bat 65
Rockets on the Way to Saturn 71
Rockets in Saturn 73
Meditation 75
The Moon is a Devil-Jester 77
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 79
Some Balloons Grow on Trees 81
Babylon’s Gardens are Burning 85
The Ape Rode the Jumbo 87
A Political Campaign 89
Old Judge Hoot Owl 91
Pearls 93
The Land Horse 95
The Sea Horse 97
Concerning the Mouse with Two Tails 99
Words about an Ancient Queen 101
[Illustration]
[Illustration] GOING-TO-THE-SUN
[Illustration] THE ELEMENTS OF GOOD TEA
This book is a sequel and a reply to a book by Stephen Graham,
explorer-poet, and Vernon Hill, artist.
I had a splendid six weeks tramping with my lifetime friend, Stephen
Graham, in the Rockies. We climbed northwest through Glacier Park,
Montana, across the Canadian line into Alberta, Canada. There it is in
two sentences.
It would take more than the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ to tell on how
many points I differ from Stephen, and on how many points I agree with
him. I had not the least idea that so much Lindsay was going into
Graham’s fireside notes--while I was asleep at noon, often recovering in
an hour from ten hours of restless, sleepless freezing by night. I do
not hold myself liable in court for any opinions of mine then recorded
by Graham. My daytime strength was not all given to thought, however,
but often to trying to keep Graham in sight when he was a quarter of a
mile ahead of me climbing mountains absolutely perpendicular. As I
remember our first fireside discussions, they were as to whether there
was actually such a person as Patrick Henry. Graham had an idea he was a
perverse invention of my own fancy. But he looked him up afterwards and
found there was such a man. As I remember our conversations after that
provocation, I kept trying to deliver to him from memory Bryce’s
_American Commonwealth_, unabridged, two volumes, one thousand pages
each. I remember those volumes well. I read every page in lonely country
hotels and on slow local trains while a Sunday field-worker for the
Anti-Saloon League. And now invisible leaves of Bryce often made the
chief ingredient of our tea. So I have indicated in the design.
I did not tell Graham I was quoting the great ambassador, and so many
unsupported, heavy and formidable statements he quite properly hesitated
to write out, without further confirmation, though he drank them down
quite cheerfully. In the great blank spaces in Graham’s narrative where
he skips really splendid scenery, I was quoting Bryce--not always
singing hymns!
The most authentic part of my book, the part Mr. Vernon Hill has left
out, is that the mountains were as steep as I have drawn them. His
mountains, otherwise quite correct, are not sufficiently perpendicular.
Vernon Hill, of course, was not physically with us on the expedition. He
was in London, drawing beautiful and famous Arcadian Calendars. When
later he came to illustrate Graham’s book in London, with Graham bending
over him, no one mentioned the fact that the mountains were all like
church steeples. Graham had not noticed it, and it did not occur to
Vernon Hill by wireless. Otherwise Vernon Hill was in excellent
communication with us, and every picture in Graham’s book expresses
exactly what Graham was talking to me about to make me forget the
tumbles and the briers, and to drown out the Bryce.
After I had hunted for years and years to find an explorer-poet who
would take a long walk with me, and had scared every one off by the
elaborateness of the proposal, the first troubadour that took me up on
it almost broke my neck. It was a grand and awful time. The sensible
reviews of Graham’s book have been by Walter Prichard Eaton. He does not
discuss Graham’s opinions or mine. But he is very plain about the fact
that we almost slid into eternity. He has tried those mountains himself,
and he knows. He should write several more reviews.
Stephen Graham is a lifetime friend, and I have assembled these drawings
as a sign thereof. But because I have been studying Hieroglyphics in the
Metropolitan Museum all this summer, and because United States
Hieroglyphics of my own invention are haunting me day and night, this
book is drawn, and not written. I serve notice on the critics--the
verses are most incidental, merely to explain the pictures. And so,
directly considered, it is much more a reply to Vernon Hill, the artist,
than to Stephen.
The artist of the Arcadian Calendar discerned rightly. Graham and I
were in Arcady, even if it was a bit rough.
Going-To-The-Sun Mountain is the very jewel of the mountains of Glacier
Park. All the tourists love it, and they are right. Its name fits it.
Going-To-The-Sun Mountain is our American Fujiyama, as all testify who
have seen it.
Obviously, an ingredient of good tea is talk on Egyptian Hieroglyphics.
I had an invisible copy of an Egyptian Grammar with me and I put a leaf
from it into every pot of tea. Graham did not take to the taste of it as
much as he did to the pages of Bryce, but he was nobly patient, as one
may say, with Egypt.
The Hieroglyphics in this work are based on two more British-Egyptian
grammars he sent me after he reached London. Still, they may be
described as United States Hieroglyphics, and almost any Egyptologist
will be willing to describe them that way, having about as much to do
with Egypt as Egyptian cigarettes. The Egyptians were, briefly, a nation
of Vernon Hills, who drew their “Arcadian Calendar” for four thousand
years in red and black ink, or cut it in granite. _I keep thinking about
them!_ A free translation of the hieroglyphic inscription at the bottom
of the first picture following is:
+-----------------------------------------------+
| _The beating heart of the waterfall of the |
| double truth, as it appears to a scribe, |
| a servant of Thoth--Thoth, who is god of |
| picture-writing, photoplays and hieroglyphics,|
| and an intense admirer of waterfalls._ |
+-----------------------------------------------+
With this start, the reader can go straight through the book without a
mistake.
Now, a last word as to the seal, _The Elements of Good Tea_.
On the southern side of the Canadian-United States boundary, just as we
reached it, our coffee gave out. Most symbolical happening! There in the
deep woods, as we passed to the northern side, Graham said with a sigh
of insatiable anticipation: “Now we will have some tea.” We had had tea
all along, alternated with coffee. But now Stephen, on his own heath,
was emphatic about it. So he made tea, a whole potful, with a kick like
a battering ram, and I drank my half.
Certainly the most worth-while thing in Stephen’s book, and mine, is a
matter known to all men long before the books were written. That is,
that a Britisher and a United Stateser can cross the Canadian-American
line together and discover that it is hardly there; can discover that an
international boundary can be genuine and eternal and yet friendly. If
there is one thing on which Stephen and I will agree till the Judgment
Day, it is that all the boundaries in the world should be as open, and
as happy, as the Canadian-United States line. To many diplomats such a
boundary is incredible, and yet it exists, one of the longest in the
world.
VACHEL LINDSAY
WE START WEST FOR THE WATERFALLS
Tricking us, making our hearts their prey,
The dreams of the dreams, with books of the dreams,
Haunt the homes of the town this day;
The visions of rivers, with rhymes of the waterfalls,
Haunt the yards of the town this day;
The fairies of the fairies, with the flowers of the fairies,
Haunt the factories of the town this day;
And we throw them kisses, and they fly away.
Tricking us, making our hearts their prey,
The angels of the angels, with the flags of the angels,
Haunt the clouds above the town this day,
And we throw them kisses and they fly away.
And they call us west to the glacial mountains,
To the mines that are books, to the natural fountains.
[Illustration]
GOING-TO-THE-SUN
The mountain peak called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
In Glacier Park,
Is the most gorgeous one,
And when the sun comes down to it, it glows
With emerald and rose.
[Illustration]
THE MYSTIC ROOSTER OF THE MONTANA SUNRISE
On the mountain peak, called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
I saw the rooster that no storm can tame,
The center of the sun was but his eye,
His comb was but the sun rays and the flame.
There in the Glacier Park, above white glaciers,
There, above Montana and the west,
He crowed and called his boast around the world,
Emotion shook his red embroidered vest.
There is humor in the very biggest rooster,
But even more magnificence than fun.
I laugh because he acted like a rooster,
I am solemn, for he was the biggest one.
I like a rooster or a turkey gobbler,
I like their forthright impudence at times.
They are neither larks, nor trilling nightingales,
And yet they always sing in splendid rhymes.
When I heard the vast bird of the sunrise crying,
The world held not one inch of silly prose.
Any rooster is a flowerlike fowl,
And this one was a crimson Yankee rose.
[Illustration]
THE BIRD CALLED “CURIOSITY”
Round the mountain peak called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
In Glacier Park, a steep and soaring one,
Circled a curious bird with pointed nose
Who led us on to every cave, and rose
And swept through every cloud, then brought us berries,
And all the acid gifts the mountain carries,
And let us guess which ones were good to eat.
And even when we slept his sharp wings beat
The weary fire, or shook the tree-top cones,
Or rattled dead twigs like a fairy’s bones.
The vulgar bird, “Curiosity”! When we
Were tired, and lean, and shaking at the knee,
We put this bird in harness. He was strong
As any ostrich, pulled our packs along,
Helped us up over the next annoying wall,
And dragged us to the chalet, and the tourists’ resting hall.
And when once more we were young, well-fed men,
He beat the door to call us forth again.
[Illustration]
THE THISTLEVINE
The Thistlevine saw the butterflies
Disappear through the morning skies.
[Illustration]
AND THEY LAUGHED
By the mountain peak, called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
A dizzy mountain, where paths twist round and round
And nothing in sober order can be found--
I asked the poppies: “What fairies do you see?”
And they shook their long stems, and they laughed at me.
[Illustration:
AND
THEY
LAUGHED
VACHEL LINDSAY 1922]
[Illustration]
THE FAIRY CIRCUS
A fairy ran a circus
With a pigeon puffed and proud,
A humble bullfrog
And a rather solid cloud.
She wore her underwear,
The rest wore what they had,
The frog wore a blue coat
Just like his dad.
The pigeon wore his feathers
And spread himself--O My!
The cloud wore sunshine
He gathered in the sky.
[Illustration]
THE BATTLE-AX OF THE SUN
On the mountain peak I reached the drift
And I took it for a Christmas gift,
And I made ten soldiers out of snow.
But the battle-ax of my fairy foe
Cut to the ground my men of snow.
And who was he, my fairy foe,
Who brought my snowy army low?
The mountain sun was my fairy foe.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE-AX OF THE SUN]
[Illustration]
THE CHRISTMAS TREES
On the high slope of Going-To-The-Sun
Is a stormy Christmas, all year round,
And snow-filled Christmas trees abound.
[Illustration: VACHEL LINDSAY, 1922]
[Illustration]
THE PHEASANT SPEAKS OF HIS BIRTHDAYS
Up the good slope of Going-To-The-Sun,
I saw the Pheasant-Of-The-Sunrise fly.
Jewels in his feathers, mixed with dew.
Dew and jewels made his jeweled eye.
He paused to make a sonnet, which he sang,
Though nowhere else are pheasants sonneteers.
He emphasized with swooping and with skipping,
With winkings and intoxicated leers.
And how the bushes twinkled as he caroled:
“Each morning is another birthday, friend.
And I have lived so many happy birthdays!
There are gifts with all the suns that here ascend!
Each bush, you see, has an unextinguished candle
And angel-food, and icing, and candy flowers,
And this long vine that climbs from earth to heaven
Gives me thoughts, and most erratic powers.
I eat its scarlet berries and its frosting.
If I choose, it is my present every day.
Then I can fly straight up to heaven’s doorstep
Following the green line all the way.
[Illustration]
“And then I tumble like a limber leaf
To my nest here, and another year is done
Or another thousand years, what does it matter
On the mountain peak called ‘Going-To-The-Sun’?”
THE MYSTIC UNICORN OF THE MONTANA SUNSET
On the mountain peak, called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
I saw the Unicorn-No-Storm-Can-Tame.
The center of the sun was but his eye,
His mane was but the sun rays and the flame.
There in that Glacier Park, above green pastures,
There above Stephen’s camp fire in the rocks,
He foamed and pawed and whinnied round the world,
His feathered sides and plumes and bristling locks
Seemed but the banners of a great announcement
That unicorns were spry as heretofore,
That not a camp fire of the world was dead,
That dragons lived in them, and thousands more
Camp-born, were clawing at the clouds of Asia,
Were rising with to-morrow’s dawn for men,
Camp-fire dragons, with the ancient unicorn
Bringing the Rosicrucian days again.
Any unicorn can drive away
Any thoughts the grown-up race has spoiled.
When I heard the Unicorn-of-Sunset ramping
New fancies in my veins bubbled and boiled.
[Illustration]
Any unicorn is worth his oats,
And so we fed him bacon, and we made
An extra cup of tea, which he drank.
Then he curled up coltwise, and in slumber sank.
Dragons sprang up, next day, where he had stayed.
They were in Fujiyama silks arrayed,
Or spoke of Everest to Stephen. Then began
Discussing the strange peak in Darien
That poets climb to see the Pacific well.
How Stephen climbed it later, I will let him tell.
Following the Unicorn-No-Storm-Can-Tame
Alone, in tropic woods, is a great game.
JOHNNY APPLESEED STILL FURTHER WEST
On the mountain peak, called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
I saw old Johnny Appleseed once more.
He ate an apple, threw away the core.
Then turned and smiled and slackly watched it fall
Into a crevice of the mountain wall.
In an instant there was an apple tree,
The roots split up the rocks beneath our feet,
And apples rolled down the green mountainside
And fairies popped from them, flying and free!
[Illustration]
And
Fairies
Came from them.
[Illustration]
THE APPLE-BARREL OF JOHNNY APPLESEED
On the mountain peak, called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
I saw gray Johnny Appleseed at prayer
Just as the sunset made the old earth fair.
Then darkness came; in an instant, like great smoke,
The sun fell down as though its great hoops broke
And dark rich apples, poured from the dim flame
Where the sun set, came rolling toward the peak,
A storm of fruit, a mighty cider-reek,
The perfume of the orchards of the world,
From apple-shadows: red and russet domes
That turned to clouds of glory and strange homes
Above the mountain tops for cloud-born souls:--
Reproofs for men who build the world like moles,
Models for men, if they would build the world
As Johnny Appleseed would have it done--
Praying, and reading the books of Swedenborg
On the mountain top called “Going-To-The-Sun.”
[Illustration]
THE COMET OF GOING-TO-THE-SUN
On the mountain peak, called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
A comet stopped to drink from a cool spring
And like a spirit-harp began to sing
To us, then hurried on to reach the sun.
We called him “Homer’s soul,” and “Milton’s wing.”
The harp-sound stayed, though he went up and on.
It turned to thunder, when he had quite gone--
And yet was like a soft voice of the sea,
And every whispering root and every blade of grass
And every tree
In the whole world, and brought thoughts of old songs
That blind men sang ten thousand years ago,
And all the springtime hearts of every nation know.
[Illustration]
THE BOAT WITH THE KITE STRING AND THE CELESTIAL EYES
On the mountain peak, called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
I sat alone; while Stephen explored higher,
I dragged in sticks and logs and kept our fire.
On soft-winged sails of meditation
My boat of spiral shells and flowers,
And fluffy clouds and twinkling hours,
My thought-boat went with the sun all day
Over the glaciers, far away.
I sat alone, but the chipmunks knew
My boat was high, and plain to view.
I flew my ship like a kite. The thread
Was a cobweb silk, fine and thin,
That came from out the palm of my hand.
There I saw the ship begin.
From the gypsy’s life line thence it came
A feather of mist that flew to the dawn,
And I felt the spool in my wrist unwind,
And I saw the feather on heaven’s lawn,
Now a glimmering ship like a lark awake.
And the kite string sang, but did not break.
[Illustration]
It stretched like the string of a violin
Played by invisible tides and waves.
It sang of Springfield yet to be.
It sang of the dead hours in their graves.
And of the United States to be,
And of all the map stretched out below.
And my kite had pansy eyes in its wings,
And I saw the states in their bloom and glow
Yet a child’s block-map, and nothing more,
Flat patterns on a playroom floor.
Texas the fort, by the river to the south,
Michigan a pheasant with a leaf in its mouth,
Illinois an ear of corn, in the shock,
Maine a moose-horn, gray as a rock.
California a whale, in gilded mail,
Montana, a ranch of alfalfa and clover,
Montana with its mountain called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
An outdoor temple for the singer and the rover,
Wyoming a range for a summer lark,
With sparkling trails, and its Yellowstone Park,
Colorado an Indian tent for the world,
Where the smokes of care-free camps are curled,
Arizona a mission in the desert for all time,
Where the nerves find peace, and thoughts find rhyme,
New Mexico a clay pueblo full of dreams,
Eldorado in its valleys, ghosts by its streams.
Utah a throne for a grandeur unknown,
For haughty hearts, with ways of their own.
Nevada the cabin of Mark Twain in his youth,
Where he mined in the cañons, where he dug for the truth.
Washington a western soldier’s tent,
Idaho a chair for a president,
North and South Dakota, one buffalo hide,
Oregon a lumber mill on a mountain side,
Nebraska, Oklahoma, cowboy pistols pointing west
Kansas a wheat field where I, once, was a guest,
Iowa a corn pone sizzling hot,
Minnesota a farmer’s coffee-pot.
Arkansas a steamboat at Mark Twain’s door,
Missouri Mark Twain’s raft on the shore.
Louisiana a cavalier’s boot, just the thing
When we wade toward the mouth of the delta in the spring.
Mississippi a cotton scales,
Alabama many cotton bales,
Georgia a peach-basket red,
Florida a wild turkey’s head,
North Carolina a crane, flying through a cloud,
South Carolina a soldier, with head unbowed,
West Virginia, the raccoon, shrewd and slow,
Tennessee Bob Taylor’s fiddle and bow,
Virginia Thomas Jefferson’s mountain and shroud,
Kentucky the log cradle of the proud.
Maryland a plow, Delaware a pruning hook,
Indiana Riley’s Hoosier book,
Wisconsin a caldron, cool it who can,
Ohio Johnny Appleseed’s park for man.
Vermont a poet’s house, with waterfall and fern,
Where Frost writes songs that the world will learn.
New Jersey the doorstep of the nation,
Pennsylvania the front room of the nation,
Where once Penn welcomed all creation
And let them sleep on the grassy floor
And let them eat the wild berries and explore.
Rhode Island, Roger Williams’ holy place,
Connecticut, an arbor of innocence and grace
Filled with flowers, and souls like lace,
Especially one little girl six years young
Who tells me stories in the fairy tongue.
New Hampshire the mast of the Mayflower,
Massachusetts the prow of the Mayflower,
Most famous ark forevermore.
The whole map a temple, if we patiently read,
With the statue of Liberty in majesty to plead
For Arcady to come once more,
And with New York on guard,
New York a sentinel,
New York a lion by the door.
By my camp fire I grew older,
There were chipmunks on my shoulder,
While I saw the world,
With the eyes of my boat,
As one land,
With Asia and Alaska by the ice bound as one,
The Aurora Borealis was a cross bright as the sun.
I seemed to live through myriad days.
My eyes looked down like searching rays.
I took my flight over many races,
I saw, in my thought, all human faces.
And my spirit had its fill.
And the thread in my wrist wound in again
The cobweb shortened, strand on strand,
And my little ship came back to land
And was only a feather in my hand.
SO MUCH THE WORSE FOR BOSTON
[Sidenote:
_Some words about singing this song,
Are written this border along._]
I read the aspens like a book, and every leaf was signed,
And I climbed above the aspen-grove to read what I could find
On Mount Clinton, Colorado, I met a mountain-cat.
I will call him “Andrew Jackson,” and I mean no harm by that.
He was growling, and devouring a terrific mountain-rat.
But when the feast was ended, the mountain-cat was kind,
And showed a pretty smile, and spoke his mind.
“I am dreaming of old Boston,” he said, and wiped his jaws.
[Illustration: THE BIG EARED RAT OF BOSTON]
“I have often HEARD of Boston,” and he folded in his paws,
“Boston, Massachusetts, a mountain bold and great.
I will tell you all about it, if you care to curl and wait.
[Sidenote:
_If I cannot sing in the aspens’ tongue,
If I know not what they say,
Then I have never gone to school,
And have wasted all my day._]
“In the Boston of my beauty-sleep, when storm-flowers are in bloom,
When storm-lilies and storm-thistles and storm-roses are in bloom,
The faithful cats go creeping through the catnip-ferns,
_And_ rainbows, _and_ sunshine, _and_ gloom,
And pounce upon the Boston Mice, that tremble underneath the flowers,
And pounce upon the big-eared rats, and drag them to the tomb.
For we are Tom-policemen, vigilant and sure.
We keep the Back Bay ditches and potato cellars pure.
Apples are not bitten into, cheese is let alone.
[Illustration: VACHEL LINDSAY 1922
THE BOSTON MOUSE WAITS IN TERROR OF THE MOUNTAIN-CAT, UNDER THE SHADOW
OF THE STORM-ROSE]
[Sidenote:
_Come, let us whisper of men and beasts
And joke as the aspens do,
And yet be solemn in their way,
And tell our thoughts
All summer through,
In the morning,
In the frost,
And in the midnight dew._]
Sweet corn is left upon the cob, and the beef left on the bone.
Every Sunday morning, the Pilgrims give us codfish balls,
Because we keep the poisonous rats from the Boston halls.”
And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat.
“I have never seen, in the famous Hub, suppression of the rat.”
“So much the worse for Boston,” said the whiskery mountain-cat.
And the cat continued his great dream, closing one shrewd eye:
“The Tower-of-Babel Cactus blazes above the sky.
Fangs and sabers guard the buds and crimson fruits on high.
Yet cactus-eating eagles and black hawks hum through the air.
When the pigeons weep in Copley Square, look up, those wings are there,
[Illustration: VACHEL LINDSAY 1922
THE TOWER-OF-BABEL CACTUS BLAZES ABOVE THE SKY]
[Sidenote:
_The mountain-cat seems violent,
And of no good intent.
Yet read his words so gently
No bird will leave its tree,
No child will hate the simper or the noise
And hurry away from you and me.
Read like a meditative, catlike willow-tree._]
[Sidenote:
_Some words about singing this song,
Are scattered this border along._]
Proud Yankee birds of prey, overshadowing the land,
Screaming to younger Yankees of the self-same brand,
Whose talk is like the American flag, snapping on the summit-pole,
Sky-rocket and star-spangled words, round sunflower words,
they use them whole.
There are no tailors in command, men seem like trees in honest leaves.
Their clothes are but their bark and hide, and sod and binding
for their sheaves.
Men are as the shocks of corn, as natural as alfalfa fields.
And no one yields to purse or badge; only to sweating manhood yields,
To natural authority, to wisdom straight from the new sun.
Who is the bull-god of the herd? The strongest and the shaggiest one.
Or if they preen at all, they preen with Walter Raleigh’s
gracious pride:--
The forest-ranger! One grand show! With gun and spade slung at his side!
Up on the dizzy timber-line, arbiter of life and fate,
Where sacred frost shines all the year, and freezing bee
and mossflower mate.
[Sidenote:
_Read like the Mariposa with the stately stem,
With green jade leaves like ripples and like waves,
And white jade petals,
Smooth as foam can be--
The Mariposa lily, that is leaning upon the young stream’s hem,
Speaking grandly to that larger flower
That grows down toward the sea, hour after hour
Hunting for the Pacific storms and caves._]
“Boston is tough country, and the ranger rides with death,
Plunges to stop the forest fire against the black smoke’s breath,
Buries the cattle killed by eating larkspur lush and blue,
Shoots the calf-thieves, lumber-thieves, and gets train-robbers too.
[Sidenote:
_Some words about singing this song,
Are scattered this border along._]
Governor and Sheriff obey his ordering hand,
Following his ostrich plume across the amber sand.
“But often, for lone days he goes, exploring cliffs afar,
And chants his King James’ Bible to tarantula and star.
I hear him read Egyptian tales, as he rides by in the dawn.
I am sometimes an Egyptian cat. My crudities are gone.
He spells, in Greek, that Homer, as he hurries on alone.
I hear him scan at Virgil, as I hide behind a stone.
“He had kept me fond of Hawthorne, and Thoreau, cold and wise.
The silvery waves of Walden Pond, gleam in a bobcat’s eyes.
He has taught us grateful beasts to sing, like Orpheus of old.
The Boston forest ranger brings back the Age of Gold.”
And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat.
[Illustration: VACHEL LINDSAY 1922
A BACK-BAY WHALE]
“I have never heard, in the cultured Hub, of rowdy men like that.”
“So much the worse for Boston,” said the Rocky Mountain cat.
[Sidenote:
_Sing like the Mariposa to the stream that seeks the sea,
Speak like that flower,
With still,
Olympian jest,
And cuplike word
Filling the hour._]
And the cat purred on, in his great dream, as one who
seeks the noblest ends:--
“Higher than the Back Bay whales, that spout and leap,
and bite their friends,
Higher than those Moby-Dicks, the Boston Lover’s trail ascends.
Higher than the Methodist, or Unitarian spire,
Beyond the range of any fence of bowlder or barbed wire,
Telling to each other what the Boston Boys have done,
The lodge-pole pines go towering to the timber-line and sun.
And their whisper stirs love’s fury in each pantherish girl-child,
Till she dresses like a columbine, or a bleeding heart gone wild.
Like a harebell, golden aster, bluebell, Indian arrow,
Blue jay, squirrel, meadow lark, loco, mountain sparrow.
Mayflower, sagebrush, dying swan, they court in disarray.
The masquerade, in Love’s hot name, is like a forest-play.
And she is held in worship who adores the noblest boys.
So miner-lovers bring her new amazing pets and toys.
Mewing, prowling hunters bring her grizzlies in chains.
Ranchers bring red apples through the silver rains.
In the mountain of my beauty-sleep, when storm-flowers
Are in bloom,
The Boston of my beauty-sleep, when storm-flowers
Are in bloom.
There are just such naked waterfalls, as are roaring there below.
For the springs of Boston Common are from priceless summer snow.
Serene the wind-cleared Boston peaks, and there white rabbits run
Like funny giant snowflakes, hopping in the sun.
The ptarmigan will leap and fly and clutter through the drift
And the baby ptarmigans ‘peep, peep,’ when the weasel eyelids lift.
And where the pools are still and deep, dwarf willows see themselves,
And the Boston Mariposas bend, like mirror-kissing elves.
White is the gypsum cliff, and white the snowbird’s warm,
deep-feathered home,
White are the cottonwood and birch, white is the fountain-foam.
“In the waterfalls from the sunburnt cliffs, the bold
nymphs leap and shriek
The wrath of the water makes them fight, its kisses make them weak.
With shoulders hot with sunburn, with bodies rose and white,
And streaming curls like sunrise rays, or curls like flags of night,
Flowing to their dancing feet, circling them in storm,
And their adorers glory in each lean, Ionic form.
Oh, the hearts of women, then set free. They live the life of old
That chickadees and bobcats sing, the famous Age of Gold....
They sleep and star-gaze on the grass, their red-ore camp fires shine,
Like heaps of unset rubies spilled on velvet superfine.
And love of man and maid is when the granite weds the snow-white stream.
The ranch house bursts with babies. In the wood-lot deep eyes gleam,
Buffalo children, barking wolves, fuming cinnamon bears.
Human mustangs kick the paint from the breakfast-table chairs.”
And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat.
“I have never heard, in the modest Hub, of a stock ill-bred as that.”
“So much the worse for Boston,” said the lecherous mountain-cat.
And the cat continued with the dream, as the snow blew round in drifts.
“The caves beneath the craggy sides of Boston hold tremendous gifts
For many youths that enter there, and lift up every stone that lifts.
They wander in, and wander on, finding all new things they can,
Some forms of jade or chrysoprase, more rare than radium for man.
And the burro trains, to fetch the loot, are jolly fool parades.
The burros flap their ears and bray, and take the steepest grades.
Or loaded with long mining-drills, and railroad rails,
and boards for flumes,
Up Beacon Hill with fossil bats, swine bones from geologic tombs,
Or loaded with cliff-mummies of lost dwellers of the land.
Explorers’ yells and bridle bells sound above the sand.
“In the desert of my beauty-sleep, when rainflowers
Will not bloom,
In the Boston of my beauty-sleep, when storms
Will not bloom,
[Illustration: VACHEL LINDSAY 1922
THE BAT]
By Bunker Hill’s tall obelisk, till the August sun awakes,
I brood and stalk blue shadows, and my mad heart breaks.
Thoughts of a hunt unutterable ring the obelisk around.
And a thousand glorious sphinxes spring, singing, from the ground.
Very white young Salem witches ride them down the west.
The gravel makes a flat, lone track, the eye has endless rest.
Fair girls and beasts charge, dreaming, through the
salt-sand white as snow,
Hunting the three-toed pony, while mysterious slaughters flow.
And the bat from the salt desert sucks the clouds on high
Until they fall in ashes, and all the sky is dry.
Oh, the empty Spanish Missions, where the bells ring without hand,
As we drive the shadowy dinosaurs and mammoths through the sand.”
And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat.
“I have never seen, in the sun-kissed Hub, circuses like that.”
“So much the worse for you, my cub,” said the slant-eyed mountain-cat.
And the cat continued with his yarn, while I stood there marveling:--
“I here proclaim that I am not a vague, an abstract thing.
I like to eat the turkey-leg, the lamb, the chickenwing.
Yet the cat that knows not fasting, the cat that knows not dream,
That has not drunk dim mammoth-blood from the long-dead desert stream,
That has not rolled in the alkali-encrusted pits of bones
By the saber-toothed white tiger’s cave, where he kicked
the ancient stones,
Has not known sacred Boston. Our gods are burning ore.
Our Colorado gods are the stars of heaven’s floor.
But the god of Massachusetts is a Tiger they adore.
“From that saber-tooth’s ghost-purring goes the whispered word of power
In the sunset, in the moonlight, in the purple sunrise hour:--
That an Indian chief is born, in a teepee, to the west,
That a school of rattlesnakes is rattling, on the mountain’s breast,
That an opal has been grubbed from the ground by a mole,
That a bumble-bee has found a new way to save his soul.
In Egyptian granite Boston, the rumor has gone round
That new ways to tame the whirlwind have been marvelously found.
That a Balanced Rock has fallen, that a battle has been won
In the soul of some young touch-me-not, some tigerish Emerson.”
And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat.
“Boston people do not read their Emerson like that.”
“So much the worse for Boston,” said the self-reliant cat.
Then I saw the cat there towering, like a cat cut from a hill:--
A prophet-beast of Nature’s law, staring with stony will,
Pacing on the icy top, then stretched in drowsy thought,
Then, listening, on tiptoe, to the voice the snowwind brought,
Tearing at the fire-killed pine trees, kittenish again,
Then speaking like a lion, long made president of men:--
“There are such holy plains and streams, there are such
sky-arched spaces,
There are life-long trails for private lives, and endless
whispering places.
Range is so wide there is not room for lust and poison breath
And flesh may walk in Eden, forgetting shame and death.”
And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat.
“I have never heard, in Boston, of anything like that.”
“_Boston is peculiar._
_Boston is mysterious._
_You do not know your Boston_,” said the wise, fastidious cat,
And turned again to lick the skull of his prey, the mountain-rat!
And at that, he broke off his wild dream of a perfect human race.
And I walked down to the aspen grove where is neither time nor place,
Nor measurement, nor space, except that grass has room
And aspen leaves whisper on forever in their grace.
All day they watch along the banks. All night the perfume goes
From the Mariposa’s chalice to the marble mountain-rose,
In the Boston of their beauty-sleep, when storm-flowers
Are in bloom,
In the mystery of their beauty-sleep, when storm-flowers
Are in bloom.
[Illustration: ROCKETS ON THE WAY TO SATURN]
THE ROCKETS THAT REACHED SATURN
On the Fourth of July sky rockets went up
Over the church and the trees and the town,
Stripes and stars, riding red cars.
Each rocket wore a red-white-and-blue gown,
And I did not see one rocket come down.
Next day on the hill I found dead sticks,
Scorched like blown-out candle-wicks.
But where are the rockets? Up in the sky.
As for the sticks, let them lie.
Dead sticks are not the Fourth of July.
In Saturn they grow like wonderful weeds,
In some ways like weeds of ours,
Twisted and beautiful, straight and awry,
But nodding all day to the heavenly powers.
The stalks are smoke,
And the blossoms green light,
And crystalline fireworks flowers.
[Illustration: VACHEL LINDSAY 1922
ROCKETS IN SATURN]
MEDITATION
A spirit in soft slippers
Walked the Gulf Stream floor.
She opened many a cabin door
Of ships a long time underseas.
She read long-rest Egyptian books
And looked upon skull-faces,
And read their restless looks
Shining through the shadows
Of phosphorescent streaming waves,--
Impatient for the Judgment horn
To lift them from their purple graves.
[Illustration]
THE TRAVELER
The Moon’s a devil-jester
Who makes himself too free.
The rascal is not always
Where he appears to be:--
Sometimes he is in my heart--
Sometimes in the sea.
Then tides are in my heart,
And tides are in the sea.
O traveler! abiding not
Where he pretends to be!
[Illustration: THE MOON IS A DEVIL-JESTER
VACHEL LINDSAY 1922]
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sat gossiping with Robert.
(She was really a raving beauty in her day.
With Mary Pickford curls in clouds and whirls.)
She was trying to think of something nice to say,
So she pointed to a page by her fellow star and sage,
And said: “I wish that _I_ could write that way!”
[Illustration]
SOME BALLOONS GROW ON TREES
FOR BETSY RICHARDS
Some balloons grow on trees,
On rubber trees, indeed.
You plant old rubber-boots for seed.
Some balloons grow on trees.
If you want them red,
You pour red ink into the boots,
There in the balloon bed,
And blue ink if you want them blue.
But if you desire them green,
Just let it pass.
They will turn green to match the grass.
Some balloons grow on trees.
And if you do not spray them soon
With water-pots of hellebore
You will not have
One ripe balloon.
Mosquitoes will bite them in the night
Explode them like a thunder-storm
And give the town a fright.
[Illustration]
Some balloons grow on trees.
If they grow too fast
And are not gathered every day
The infants stand aghast
To see them tear up by the roots
The trees on which they grew
And scatter dirt on the front walk
And disappear from view
Into the blue.
BABYLON’S GARDENS ARE BURNING
There, on the shores of the river Euphrates,
Babylon’s gardens are burning this morning.
Prophets warned,
Prophets prophesied,
But no one in Babylon heeded the warning.
[Illustration: BABYLON’S GARDENS ARE BURNING
VACHEL LINDSAY 1922]
[Illustration]
IN THE BEAUTY PARLORS
A jumbo so vain, and fond of his shape
Had himself beautified by a gray ape,
Tattooed and gilded with elegant signs,
The latest and merriest monkey designs.
Then the ape rode the jumbo
And made the land gape,
As he sat at his ease in the elephant chair.
He had tattooed himself with designs from a shawl,
And he gathered a grape with a self-possessed air,
And threw down a twig at another fine ape.
[Illustration: VACHEL LINDSAY 1922
THE APE RODE THE JUMBO]
[Illustration]
A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN
A duck within the harem of a drake who ran for president
Swam in his parade, and made it an event.
She carried a big card of his footprints and she said:--
“He waddles like an arrow, straight ahead.”
[Illustration]
OLD JUDGE HOOT OWL
Old Judge Hoot Owl sits by his inkwell
Writing wills for the wealthy and swell.
He knows something he won’t tell.
Three little house flies, drowned in his inkwell.
Three little scandals in a peanut shell.
[Illustration]
PEARLS
Now she was fond of jewelry,
The Lady-of-Fiddle-Dee-Dee,
So she built her house
Near an oyster bed,
Where the pearls were almost free.
[Illustration]
THE LAND HORSE AND THE SEA HORSE
The Land Horse
Everybody rides,
Until his eyes are dim.
[Illustration: THE LAND HORSE]
[Illustration]
The Sea Horse!
Every wave he rides.
And nobody
Rides him.
[Illustration: THE SEA HORSE
VACHEL LINDSAY 1922]
[Illustration]
CONCERNING THE MOUSE WITH TWO TAILS
The cat was astonished
To see the mouse stand there,
Waving two tails,
With a confident air.
[Illustration]
WORDS ABOUT AN ANCIENT QUEEN
INSCRIBED WITH APOLOGIES TO LYTTON STRACHEY
Queen Hat-shep-sut, pious and fat
Wore a hair net under her hat.
Queen Hat-shep-sut, restrained and refined
Wore a hair net over her mind.
[Illustration]
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