And the youth returned to his village and found it vile. In the City he
had seen visions of what a town might be.... Nicholas Vachel Lindsay had
been studying Art in Chicago and on his return to Springfield published,
in the fall of 1910, _The Village Magazine_: a scattering of verse,
prose, sketches, and ornamental designs and propaganda. “Talent for
poetry, deftness in inscribing, and skill in mural painting were
probably gifts of the same person”, he tells us later, in speaking of
the ancient Egyptians. “Let us go back”—the village must be redeemed.
The first editorial in the magazine was _On Conversion_. The people of
Springfield “should build them altars to the unknown God, the radiant
one; He whom they radiantly worship should be declared unto them in His
fullness.” The next was _An Editorial on Beauty for the Village
Pastor_—it expressed the belief that the Sunday-school, the Christian
Endeavor Society, the Brotherhood, Anti-Saloon League, and the Woman’s
Aid were the forces that were to bring about beauty. Springfield was to
be the new Athens! A broadside was distributed throughout the village:
_The Soul of the City receives the gift of the Holy Spirit_:
Builders, toil on,
Make all complete.
Make Springfield wonderful
Make her renown
Worthy this day,
Till, at God’s feet—
(_Etc., the poetry of the thing will not be spoiled by
omitting some lines here._)
Heaven come down
City, dead city,
Arise from the dead.
Verses like the above aside, here was revealed to us a poet; the
foundations were laid, it seemed, for a future. But the youth did dream
and see visions. Much was said about Utopias and the New Jerusalem, and
poetry languished in the youth that he might materialize some ultimate
world state. The most inexcusable optimism of them all—“Rome was not
built in a day.” True, but it _was built_: not merely talked about or
prophesied. And the youth remembered not that it hath been said in
Isaiah: “For, behold, I create a new heaven and a new earth: and the
former shall not be remembered nor come into mind.” Yet the youth
remembered the former still and did say much about the recoming of those
civilizations which had been, at last to stay forever! His day, or the
great poet who proceeded him by but a few years, he seemed to notice
not:
What do you think endures?
Do you think a great city endures? ...
Away! these are not to be cherished in themselves,
They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them,
The show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well till one flash of defiance ...
A great city is that which has the greatest men and women;
If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole
world.
But the youth was at heart the poet, the dreamer, attempting to convince
by arguments, similes, rhymes; not as the great Poet, by mere presence!
Nor could he stand the offer of rough new prizes, preferring the smooth
old prizes. He clung to the organizations of the day, and to augment
their “influence toward the Millennium” he published _The Village
Magazine_. That, gentle reader, was in 1910.