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diff --git a/old/69969-0.txt b/old/69969-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 07fb1a2..0000000 --- a/old/69969-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4655 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The golden whales of California and -other rhymes in the American language, by Vachel Lindsay - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The golden whales of California and other rhymes in the American - language - -Author: Vachel Lindsay - -Release Date: February 7, 2023 [eBook #69969] - -Language: English - -Produced by: D A Alexander, Krista Zaleski and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The - Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN WHALES OF -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. 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