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.