The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems

Vachel Lindsay

This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.

http://www.blackmask.com

Etext by A. Light
This etext was prepared by transcribing the book twice,
and electronically comparing the files to eliminate errors.


This Book is Dedicated to Sara Teasdale, Poet

  • First Section
  • Second Section
  • Third Section
  • Fourth Section
  • Fifth Section. The Poem Games
  • Etext by A. Light
    This etext was prepared by transcribing the book twice,
    and electronically comparing the files to eliminate errors.


    This Book is Dedicated to Sara Teasdale, Poet



    First Section











    The Chinese Nightingale




    A Song in Chinese Tapestries





    “How, how,” he said. “Friend Chang,” I said,
    “San Francisco sleeps as the dead —
    Ended license, lust and play:
    Why do you iron the night away?
    Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
    With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.
    While the monster shadows glower and creep,
    What can be better for man than sleep?”


    “I will tell you a secret,” Chang replied;
    “My breast with vision is satisfied,
    And I see green trees and fluttering wings,
    And my deathless bird from Shanghai sings.”
    Then he lit five fire-crackers in a pan.
    “Pop, pop,” said the fire-crackers, “cra-cra-crack.”
    He lit a joss stick long and black.
    Then the proud gray joss in the corner stirred;
    On his wrist appeared a gray small bird,
    And this was the song of the gray small bird:
    “Where is the princess, loved forever,
    Who made Chang first of the kings of men?”


    And the joss in the corner stirred again;
    And the carved dog, curled in his arms, awoke,
    Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke.
    It piled in a maze round the ironing-place,
    And there on the snowy table wide
    Stood a Chinese lady of high degree,
    With a scornful, witching, tea-rose face. . . .
    Yet she put away all form and pride,
    And laid her glimmering veil aside
    With a childlike smile for Chang and for me.


    The walls fell back, night was aflower,
    The table gleamed in a moonlit bower,
    While Chang, with a countenance carved of stone,
    Ironed and ironed, all alone.
    And thus she sang to the busy man Chang:
    “Have you forgotten. . . .
    Deep in the ages, long, long ago,
    I was your sweetheart, there on the sand —
    Storm-worn beach of the Chinese land?
    We sold our grain in the peacock town
    Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown —
    Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown. . . .


    “When all the world was drinking blood
    From the skulls of men and bulls
    And all the world had swords and clubs of stone,
    We drank our tea in China beneath the sacred spice-trees,
    And heard the curled waves of the harbor moan.
    And this gray bird, in Love's first spring,
    With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing,
    Captured the world with his carolling.
    Do you remember, ages after,
    At last the world we were born to own?
    You were the heir of the yellow throne —
    The world was the field of the Chinese man
    And we were the pride of the Sons of Han?
    We copied deep books and we carved in jade,
    And wove blue silks in the mulberry shade. . . .”


    “I remember, I remember
    That Spring came on forever,
    That Spring came on forever,”
    Said the Chinese nightingale.


    My heart was filled with marvel and dream,
    Though I saw the western street-lamps gleam,
    Though dawn was bringing the western day,
    Though Chang was a laundryman ironing away. . . .
    Mingled there with the streets and alleys,
    The railroad-yard and the clock-tower bright,
    Demon clouds crossed ancient valleys;
    Across wide lotus-ponds of light
    I marked a giant firefly's flight.


    And the lady, rosy-red,
    Flourished her fan, her shimmering fan,
    Stretched her hand toward Chang, and said:
    “Do you remember,
    Ages after,
    Our palace of heart-red stone?
    Do you remember
    The little doll-faced children
    With their lanterns full of moon-fire,
    That came from all the empire
    Honoring the throne? —
    The loveliest fete and carnival
    Our world had ever known?
    The sages sat about us
    With their heads bowed in their beards,
    With proper meditation on the sight.
    Confucius was not born;
    We lived in those great days
    Confucius later said were lived aright. . . .
    And this gray bird, on that day of spring,
    With a bright bronze breast, and a bronze-brown wing,
    Captured the world with his carolling.
    Late at night his tune was spent.
    Peasants,
    Sages,
    Children,
    Homeward went,
    And then the bronze bird sang for you and me.
    We walked alone. Our hearts were high and free.
    I had a silvery name, I had a silvery name,
    I had a silvery name —do you remember
    The name you cried beside the tumbling sea?”


    Chang turned not to the lady slim —
    He bent to his work, ironing away;
    But she was arch, and knowing and glowing,
    And the bird on his shoulder spoke for him.


    “Darling . . . darling . . . darling . . . darling . . .”
    Said the Chinese nightingale.


    The great gray joss on a rustic shelf,
    Rakish and shrewd, with his collar awry,
    Sang impolitely, as though by himself,
    Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale's cry:
    “Back through a hundred, hundred years
    Hear the waves as they climb the piers,
    Hear the howl of the silver seas,
    Hear the thunder.
    Hear the gongs of holy China
    How the waves and tunes combine
    In a rhythmic clashing wonder,
    Incantation old and fine:
     `Dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons,
     Red fire-crackers, and green fire-crackers,
     And dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons.'“


    Then the lady, rosy-red,
    Turned to her lover Chang and said:
    “Dare you forget that turquoise dawn
    When we stood in our mist-hung velvet lawn,
    And worked a spell this great joss taught
    Till a God of the Dragons was charmed and caught?
    From the flag high over our palace home
    He flew to our feet in rainbow-foam —
    A king of beauty and tempest and thunder
    Panting to tear our sorrows asunder.
    A dragon of fair adventure and wonder.
    We mounted the back of that royal slave
    With thoughts of desire that were noble and grave.
    We swam down the shore to the dragon-mountains,
    We whirled to the peaks and the fiery fountains.
    To our secret ivory house we were bourne.
    We looked down the wonderful wing-filled regions
    Where the dragons darted in glimmering legions.
    Right by my breast the nightingale sang;
    The old rhymes rang in the sunlit mist
    That we this hour regain —
    Song-fire for the brain.
    When my hands and my hair and my feet you kissed,
    When you cried for your heart's new pain,
    What was my name in the dragon-mist,
    In the rings of rainbowed rain?”


    “Sorrow and love, glory and love,”
    Said the Chinese nightingale.
    “Sorrow and love, glory and love,”
    Said the Chinese nightingale.


    And now the joss broke in with his song:
    “Dying ember, bird of Chang,
    Soul of Chang, do you remember? —
    Ere you returned to the shining harbor
    There were pirates by ten thousand
    Descended on the town
    In vessels mountain-high and red and brown,
    Moon-ships that climbed the storms and cut the skies.
    On their prows were painted terrible bright eyes.
    But I was then a wizard and a scholar and a priest;
    I stood upon the sand;
    With lifted hand I looked upon them
    And sunk their vessels with my wizard eyes,
    And the stately lacquer-gate made safe again.
    Deep, deep below the bay, the sea-weed and the spray,
    Embalmed in amber every pirate lies,
    Embalmed in amber every pirate lies.”


    Then this did the noble lady say:
    “Bird, do you dream of our home-coming day
    When you flew like a courier on before
    From the dragon-peak to our palace-door,
    And we drove the steed in your singing path —
    The ramping dragon of laughter and wrath:
    And found our city all aglow,
    And knighted this joss that decked it so?
    There were golden fishes in the purple river
    And silver fishes and rainbow fishes.
    There were golden junks in the laughing river,
    And silver junks and rainbow junks:
    There were golden lilies by the bay and river,
    And silver lilies and tiger-lilies,
    And tinkling wind-bells in the gardens of the town
    By the black-lacquer gate
    Where walked in state
    The kind king Chang
    And his sweet-heart mate. . . .
    With his flag-born dragon
    And his crown of pearl . . . and . . . jade,
    And his nightingale reigning in the mulberry shade,
    And sailors and soldiers on the sea-sands brown,
    And priests who bowed them down to your song —
    By the city called Han, the peacock town,
    By the city called Han, the nightingale town,
    The nightingale town.”


    Then sang the bird, so strangely gay,
    Fluttering, fluttering, ghostly and gray,
    A vague, unravelling, final tune,
    Like a long unwinding silk cocoon;
    Sang as though for the soul of him
    Who ironed away in that bower dim: —
     “I have forgotten
     Your dragons great,
     Merry and mad and friendly and bold.
     Dim is your proud lost palace-gate.
     I vaguely know
     There were heroes of old,
     Troubles more than the heart could hold,
     There were wolves in the woods
     Yet lambs in the fold,
     Nests in the top of the almond tree. . . .
     The evergreen tree . . . and the mulberry tree . . .
     Life and hurry and joy forgotten,
     Years on years I but half-remember . . .
     Man is a torch, then ashes soon,
     May and June, then dead December,
     Dead December, then again June.
     Who shall end my dream's confusion?
     Life is a loom, weaving illusion . . .
     I remember, I remember
     There were ghostly veils and laces . . .
     In the shadowy bowery places . . .
     With lovers' ardent faces
     Bending to one another,
     Speaking each his part.
     They infinitely echo
     In the red cave of my heart.
     `Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart.'
     They said to one another.
     They spoke, I think, of perils past.
     They spoke, I think, of peace at last.
     One thing I remember:
     Spring came on forever,
     Spring came on forever,”
     Said the Chinese nightingale.









    Second Section


    America Watching the War, August, 1914, to April, 1917









    Where Is the Real Non-resistant?




    (Matthew 5:38-48)





    Who can surrender to Christ, dividing his best with the stranger,
    Giving to each what he asks, braving the uttermost danger
    All for the enemy, MAN? Who can surrender till death
    His words and his works, his house and his lands,
    His eyes and his heart and his breath?


    Who can surrender to Christ? Many have yearned toward it daily.
    Yet they surrender to passion, wildly or grimly or gaily;
    Yet they surrender to pride, counting her precious and queenly;
    Yet they surrender to knowledge, preening their feathers serenely.


    Who can surrender to Christ? Where is the man so transcendent,
    So heated with love of his kind, so filled with the spirit resplendent
    That all of the hours of his day his song is thrilling and tender,
    And all of his thoughts to our white cause of peace
                Surrender, surrender, surrender?






    Here's to the Mice!




    (Written with the hope that the socialists might yet
    dethrone Kaiser and Czar.)





    Here's to the mice that scare the lions,
    Creeping into their cages.
    Here's to the fairy mice that bite
    The elephants fat and wise:
    Hidden in the hay-pile while the elephant thunder rages.
    Here's to the scurrying, timid mice
    Through whom the proud cause dies.


    Here's to the seeming accident
    When all is planned and working,
    All the flywheels turning,
    Not a vassal shirking.
    Here's to the hidden tunneling thing
    That brings the mountain's groans.
    Here's to the midnight scamps that gnaw,
    Gnawing away the thrones.






    When Bryan Speaks







    When Bryan speaks, the town's a hive.
    From miles around, the autos drive.
    The sparrow chirps. The rooster crows.
    The place is kicking and alive.


    When Bryan speaks, the bunting glows.
    The raw procession onward flows.
    The small dogs bark. The children laugh
    A wind of springtime fancy blows.


    When Bryan speaks, the wigwam shakes.
    The corporation magnate quakes.
    The pre-convention plot is smashed.
    The valiant pleb full-armed awakes.


    When Bryan speaks, the sky is ours,
    The wheat, the forests, and the flowers.
    And who is here to say us nay?
    Fled are the ancient tyrant powers.


    When Bryan speaks, then I rejoice.
    His is the strange composite voice
    Of many million singing souls
    Who make world-brotherhood their choice.


    Written in Washington, D.C.

                         February, 1915.








    To Jane Addams at the Hague




    Two Poems, written on the Sinking of the Lusitania.
    Appearing in the Chicago `Herald', May 11, 1915.





    I. Speak Now for Peace





    Lady of Light, and our best woman, and queen,
    Stand now for peace, (though anger breaks your heart),
    Though naught but smoke and flame and drowning is seen.


    Lady of Light, speak, though you speak alone,
    Though your voice may seem as a dove's in this howling flood,
    It is heard to-night by every senate and throne.


    Though the widening battle of millions and millions of men
    Threatens to-night to sweep the whole of the earth,
    Back of the smoke is the promise of kindness again.





    II. Tolstoi Is Plowing Yet





    Tolstoi is plowing yet. When the smoke-clouds break,
    High in the sky shines a field as wide as the world.
    There he toils for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake.


    Ah, he is taller than clouds of the little earth.
    Only the congress of planets is over him,
    And the arching path where new sweet stars have birth.


    Wearing his peasant dress, his head bent low,
    Tolstoi, that angel of Peace, is plowing yet;
    Forward, across the field, his horses go.






    The Tale of the Tiger Tree




    A Fantasy, dedicated to the little poet Alice Oliver Henderson, ten years old.


    The Fantasy shows how tiger-hearts are the cause of war in all ages.
    It shows how the mammoth forces may be either friends or enemies
    of the struggle for peace. It shows how the dream of peace
    is unconquerable and eternal.




     

    I




    Peace-of-the-Heart, my own for long,
    Whose shining hair the May-winds fan,
    Making it tangled as they can,
    A mystery still, star-shining yet,
    Through ancient ages known to me
    And now once more reborn with me: —


    This is the tale of the Tiger Tree
    A hundred times the height of a man,
    Lord of the race since the world began.


    This is my city Springfield,
    My home on the breast of the plain.
    The state house towers to heaven,
    By an arsenal gray as the rain . . .
    And suddenly all is mist,
    And I walk in a world apart,
    In the forest-age when I first knelt down
    At your feet, O Peace-of-the-Heart.


    This is the wonder of twilight:
    Three times as high as the dome
    Tiger-striped trees encircle the town,
    Golden geysers of foam.
    While giant white parrots sail past in their pride.
    The roofs now are clouds and storms that they ride.
    And there with the huntsmen of mound-builder days
    Through jungle and meadow I stride.
    And the Tiger Tree leaf is falling around
    As it fell when the world began:
    Like a monstrous tiger-skin, stretched on the ground,
    Or the cloak of a medicine man.
    A deep-crumpled gossamer web,
    Fringed with the fangs of a snake.
    The wind swirls it down from the leperous boughs.
    It shimmers on clay-hill and lake,
    With the gleam of great bubbles of blood,
    Or coiled like a rainbow shell. . . .
    I feast on the stem of the Leaf as I march.
    I am burning with Heaven and Hell.



    II


    The gray king died in his hour.
    Then we crowned you, the prophetess wise:
    Peace-of-the-Heart we deeply adored
    For the witchcraft hid in your eyes.
    Gift from the sky, overmastering all,
    You sent forth your magical parrots to call
    The plot-hatching prince of the tigers,
    To your throne by the red-clay wall.


    Thus came that genius insane:
    Spitting and slinking,
    Sneering and vain,
    He sprawled to your grassy throne, drunk on The Leaf,
    The drug that was cunning and splendor and grief.
    He had fled from the mammoth by day,
    He had blasted the mammoth by night,
    War was his drunkenness,
    War was his dreaming,
    War was his love and his play.
    And he hissed at your heavenly glory
    While his councillors snarled in delight,
    Asking in irony: “What shall we learn
    From this whisperer, fragile and white?”


    And had you not been an enchantress
    They would not have loitered to mock
    Nor spared your white parrots who walked by their paws
    With bantering venturesome talk.


    You made a white fire of The Leaf.
    You sang while the tiger-chiefs hissed.
    You chanted of “Peace to the wonderful world.”
    And they saw you in dazzling mist.
    And their steps were no longer insane,
    Kindness came down like the rain,
    They dreamed that like fleet young ponies they feasted
    On succulent grasses and grain.


         . . . . .


    Then came the black-mammoth chief:
    Long-haired and shaggy and great,
    Proud and sagacious he marshalled his court:
    (You had sent him your parrots of state.)
    His trunk in rebellion upcurled,
    A curse at the tiger he hurled.
    Huge elephants trumpeted there by his side,
    And mastodon-chiefs of the world.
    But higher magic began.
    For the turbulent vassals of man.
    You harnessed their fever, you conquered their ire,
    Their hearts turned to flowers through holy desire,
    For their darling and star you were crowned,
    And their raging demons were bound.
    You rode on the back of the yellow-streaked king,
    His loose neck was wreathed with a mistletoe ring.
    Primordial elephants loomed by your side,
    And our clay-painted children danced by your path,
    Chanting the death of the kingdoms of wrath.
    You wrought until night with us all.
    The fierce brutes fawned at your call,
    Then slipped to their lairs, song-chained.
    And thus you sang sweetly, and reigned:
    “Immortal is the inner peace, free to beasts and men.
    Beginning in the darkness, the mystery will conquer,
    And now it comforts every heart that seeks for love again.
    And now the mammoth bows the knee,
    We hew down every Tiger Tree,
    We send each tiger bound in love and glory to his den,
    Bound in love . . . and wisdom . . . and glory, . . . to his den.”



    III


    “Beware of the trumpeting swine,”
    Came the howl from the northward that night.
    Twice-rebel tigers warning was still
    If we held not beside them it boded us ill.
    From the parrots translating the cry,
    And the apes in the trees came the whine:
    “Beware of the trumpeting swine.
    Beware of the faith of a mammoth.”


    “Beware of the faith of a tiger,”
    Came the roar from the southward that night.
    Trumpeting mammoths warning us still
    If we held not beside them it boded us ill.
    The frail apes wailed to us all,
    The parrots reechoed the call:
    “Beware of the faith of a tiger.”
    From the heights of the forest the watchers could see
    The tiger-cats crunching the Leaf of the Tree
    Lashing themselves, and scattering foam,
    Killing our huntsmen, hurrying home.
    The chiefs of the mammoths our mastery spurned,
    And eastward restlessly fumed and burned.
    The peacocks squalled out the news of their drilling
    And told how they trampled, maneuvered, and turned.
    Ten thousand man-hating tigers
    Whirling down from the north, like a flood!
    Ten thousand mammoths oncoming
    From the south as avengers of blood!
    Our child-queen was mourning, her magic was dead,
    The roots of the Tiger Tree reeking with red.



    IV


    This is the tale of the Tiger Tree
    A hundred times the height of a man,
    Lord of the race since the world began.


    We marched to the mammoths,
    We pledged them our steel,
    And scorning you, sang: —
    “We are men,
    We are men.”
    We mounted their necks,
    And they stamped a wide reel.
    We sang:
    “We are fighting the hell-cats again,
    We are mound-builder men,
    We are elephant men.”
    We left you there, lonely,
    Beauty your power,
    Wisdom your watchman,
    To hold the clay tower.
    While the black-mammoths boomed —
    “You are elephant men,
    Men,
    Men,
    Elephant men.”
    The dawn-winds prophesied battles untold.
    While the Tiger Trees roared of the glories of old,
    Of the masterful spirits and hard.


    The drunken cats came in their joy
    In the sunrise, a glittering wave.
    “We are tigers, are tigers,” they yowled.
    “Down,
    Down,
    Go the swine to the grave.”
    But we tramp
    Tramp
    Trampled them there,
    Then charged with our sabres and spears.
    The swish of the sabre,
    The swish of the sabre,
    Was a marvellous tune in our ears.
    We yelled “We are men,
    We are men.”
    As we bled to death in the sun. . . .
    Then staunched our horrible wounds
    With the cry that the battle was won. . . .
    And at last,
    When the black-mammoth legion
    Split the night with their song: —
    “Right is braver than wrong,
    Right is stronger than wrong,”
    The buzzards came taunting:
    “Down from the north
    Tiger-nations are sweeping along.”


         . . . . .


    Then we ate of the ravening Leaf
    As our savage fathers of old.
    No longer our wounds made us weak,
    No longer our pulses were cold.
    Though half of my troops were afoot,
    (For the great who had borne them were slain)
    We dreamed we were tigers, and leaped
    And foamed with that vision insane.
    We cried “We are soldiers of doom,
    Doom,
    Sabres of glory and doom.”
    We wreathed the king of the mammoths
    In the tiger-leaves' terrible bloom.
    We flattered the king of the mammoths,
    Loud-rattling sabres and spears.
    The swish of the sabre,
    The swish of the sabre,
    Was a marvellous tune in his ears.



    V


    This was the end of the battle.
    The tigers poured by in a tide
    Over us all with their caterwaul call,
    “We are the tigers,”
    They cried.
    “We are the sabres,”
    They cried.
    But we laughed while our blades swept wide,
    While the dawn-rays stabbed through the gloom.
    “We are suns on fire” was our yell —
    “Suns on fire.” . . .
    But man-child and mastodon fell,
    Mammoth and elephant fell.
    The fangs of the devil-cats closed on the world,
    Plunged it to blackness and doom.
    The desolate red-clay wall
    Echoed the parrots' call: —
    “Immortal is the inner peace, free to beasts and men.
    Beginning in the darkness, the mystery will conquer,
    And now it comforts every heart that seeks for love again.
    And now the mammoth bows the knee,
    We hew down every Tiger Tree,
    We send each tiger bound in love and glory to his den,
    Bound in love . . . and wisdom . . . and glory, . . . to his den.”


    A peacock screamed of his beauty
    On that broken wall by the trees,
    Chiding his little mate,
    Spreading his fans in the breeze . . .
    And you, with eyes of a bride,
    Knelt on the wall at my side,
    The deathless song in your mouth . . .
    A million new tigers swept south . . .
    As we laughed at the peacock, and died.


    This is my vision in Springfield:
    Three times as high as the dome,
    Tiger-striped trees encircle the town,
    Golden geysers of foam; —
    Though giant white parrots sail past, giving voice,
    Though I walk with Peace-of-the-Heart and rejoice.






    The Merciful Hand




    Written to Miss Alice L. F. Fitzgerald, Edith Cavell memorial nurse,
    going to the front.





    Your fine white hand is Heaven's gift
    To cure the wide world, stricken sore,
    Bleeding at the breast and head,
    Tearing at its wounds once more.


    Your white hand is a prophecy,
    A living hope that Christ shall come
    And make the nations merciful,
    Hating the bayonet and drum.


    Each desperate burning brain you soothe,
    Or ghastly broken frame you bind,
    Brings one day nearer our bright goal,
    The love-alliance of mankind.

    Wellesley.

                         February, 1916.









    Third Section


    America at War with Germany, Beginning April, 1917









    Our Mother Pocahontas




    (Note: — Pocahontas is buried at Gravesend, England.)


    “Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November
    or a pawpaw in May —did she wonder? does she remember —
    in the dust —in the cool tombs?”

    Carl Sandburg.





    I




    Powhatan was conqueror,
    Powhatan was emperor.
    He was akin to wolf and bee,
    Brother of the hickory tree.
    Son of the red lightning stroke
    And the lightning-shivered oak.
    His panther-grace bloomed in the maid
    Who laughed among the winds and played
    In excellence of savage pride,
    Wooing the forest, open-eyed,
    In the springtime,
    In Virginia,
    Our Mother, Pocahontas.


    Her skin was rosy copper-red.
    And high she held her beauteous head.
    Her step was like a rustling leaf:
    Her heart a nest, untouched of grief.
    She dreamed of sons like Powhatan,
    And through her blood the lightning ran.
    Love-cries with the birds she sung,
    Birdlike
    In the grape-vine swung.
    The Forest, arching low and wide
    Gloried in its Indian bride.
    Rolfe, that dim adventurer
    Had not come a courtier.
    John Rolfe is not our ancestor.
    We rise from out the soul of her
    Held in native wonderland,
    While the sun's rays kissed her hand,
    In the springtime,
    In Virginia,
    Our Mother, Pocahontas.



    II


    She heard the forest talking,
    Across the sea came walking,
    And traced the paths of Daniel Boone,
    Then westward chased the painted moon.
    She passed with wild young feet
    On to Kansas wheat,
    On to the miners' west,
    The echoing canyons' guest,
    Then the Pacific sand,
    Waking,
    Thrilling,
    The midnight land. . . .


    On Adams street and Jefferson —
    Flames coming up from the ground!
    On Jackson street and Washington —
    Flames coming up from the ground!
    And why, until the dawning sun
    Are flames coming up from the ground?
    Because, through drowsy Springfield sped
    This red-skin queen, with feathered head,
    With winds and stars, that pay her court
    And leaping beasts, that make her sport;
    Because, gray Europe's rags august
    She tramples in the dust;
    Because we are her fields of corn;
    Because our fires are all reborn
    From her bosom's deathless embers,
    Flaming
    As she remembers
    The springtime
    And Virginia,
    Our Mother, Pocahontas.



    III


    We here renounce our Saxon blood.
    Tomorrow's hopes, an April flood
    Come roaring in. The newest race
    Is born of her resilient grace.
    We here renounce our Teuton pride:
    Our Norse and Slavic boasts have died:
    Italian dreams are swept away,
    And Celtic feuds are lost today. . . .


    She sings of lilacs, maples, wheat,
    Her own soil sings beneath her feet,
    Of springtime
    And Virginia,
    Our Mother, Pocahontas.






    Concerning Emperors






      I. God Send the Regicide


    Would that the lying rulers of the world
    Were brought to block for tyrannies abhorred.
    Would that the sword of Cromwell and the Lord,
    The sword of Joshua and Gideon,
    Hewed hip and thigh the hosts of Midian.
    God send that ironside ere tomorrow's sun;
    Let Gabriel and Michael with him ride.
    God send the Regicide.



      II. A Colloquial Reply: To Any Newsboy


    If you lay for Iago at the stage door with a brick
    You have missed the moral of the play.
    He will have a midnight supper with Othello and his wife.
    They will chirp together and be gay.
    But the things Iago stands for must go down into the dust:
    Lying and suspicion and conspiracy and lust.
    And I cannot hate the Kaiser (I hope you understand.)
    Yet I chase the thing he stands for with a brickbat in my hand.






    Niagara







    I


    Within the town of Buffalo
    Are prosy men with leaden eyes.
    Like ants they worry to and fro,
    (Important men, in Buffalo.)
    But only twenty miles away
    A deathless glory is at play:
    Niagara, Niagara.


    The women buy their lace and cry: —
    “O such a delicate design,”
    And over ostrich feathers sigh,
    By counters there, in Buffalo.
    The children haunt the trinket shops,
    They buy false-faces, bells, and tops,
    Forgetting great Niagara.


    Within the town of Buffalo
    Are stores with garnets, sapphires, pearls,
    Rubies, emeralds aglow, —
    Opal chains in Buffalo,
    Cherished symbols of success.
    They value not your rainbow dress: —
    Niagara, Niagara.


    The shaggy meaning of her name
    This Buffalo, this recreant town,
    Sharps and lawyers prune and tame:
    Few pioneers in Buffalo;
    Except young lovers flushed and fleet
    And winds hallooing down the street:
    “Niagara, Niagara.”


    The journalists are sick of ink:
    Boy prodigals are lost in wine,
    By night where white and red lights blink,
    The eyes of Death, in Buffalo.
    And only twenty miles away
    Are starlit rocks and healing spray: —
    Niagara, Niagara.


    Above the town a tiny bird,
    A shining speck at sleepy dawn,
    Forgets the ant-hill so absurd,
    This self-important Buffalo.
    Descending twenty miles away
    He bathes his wings at break of day —
    Niagara, Niagara.



    II


         What marching men of Buffalo
         Flood the streets in rash crusade?
         Fools-to-free-the-world, they go,
         Primeval hearts from Buffalo.
         Red cataracts of France today
         Awake, three thousand miles away
         An echo of Niagara,
         The cataract Niagara.






    Mark Twain and Joan of Arc







    When Yankee soldiers reach the barricade
    Then Joan of Arc gives each the accolade.


    For she is there in armor clad, today,
    All the young poets of the wide world say.


    Which of our freemen did she greet the first,
    Seeing him come against the fires accurst?


    Mark Twain, our Chief, with neither smile nor jest,
    Leading to war our youngest and our best.


    The Yankee to King Arthur's court returns.
    The sacred flag of Joan above him burns.


    For she has called his soul from out the tomb.
    And where she stands, there he will stand till doom.


         . . . . .


    But I, I can but mourn, and mourn again
    At bloodshed caused by angels, saints, and men.






    The Bankrupt Peace Maker







    I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room.
    The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom.
    His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor.
    He had hammer and nails that he laid by the door.
    He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair.
    He looked through my heart to the mud that was there.
    Like a black-mailer hating his victim he spoke:
    “When I see all your squirming I laugh till I choke
    Singing of peace. Railing at battle.
    Soothing a handful with saccharine prattle.
    All the millions of earth have voted for fight.
    You are voting for talk, with hands lily white.”
    He leaped to the floor, then grew seven feet high,
    Beautiful, terrible, scorn in his eye:
    The Devil Eternal, Apollo grown old,
    With beard of bright silver and garments of gold.
    “What will you do to end war for good?
    Will you stand by the book-case, be nailed to the wood?”
    I stretched out my arms. He drove the nails deep,
    Silently, coolly. The house was asleep,
    I hung for three years, forbidden to die.
    I seemed but a shadow the servants passed by.
    At the end of the time with hot irons he returned.
    “The Quitter Sublime” on my bosom he burned.
    As he seared me he hissed: “You are wearing away.
    The good angels tell me you leave them today.
    You want to come down from the nails in the door.
    The victor must hang there three hundred years more.
    If any prig-saint would outvote all mankind
    He must use an immortally resolute mind.
    Think what the saints of Benares endure,
    Through infinite birthpangs their courage is sure.
    Self-tortured, self-ruled, they build their powers high,
    Until they are gods, overmaster the sky.”
    Then he pulled out the nails. He shouted “Come in.”
    To heal me there stepped in a lady of sin.
    Her hand was in mine. We walked in the sun.
    She said: “Now forget them, the Saxon and Hun.
    You are dreary and aged and silly and weak.
    Let us smell the sweet groves. Let the summertime speak.”
    We walked to the river. We swam there in state.
    I was a serpent. She was my mate.
    I forgot in the marsh, as I tumbled about,
    That trial in my room, where I did not hold out.
    Since I was a serpent, my mate seemed to me
    As a mermaiden seems to a fisher at sea,
    Or a whisky soaked girl to a whisky soaked king.
    I woke. She had turned to a ravening thing
    On the table —a buzzard with leperous head.
    She tore up my rhymes and my drawings. She said:
    “I am your own cheap bankrupt soul.
    Will you die for the nations, making them whole?
    We joy in the swamp and here we are gay.
    WILL YOU BRING YOUR FINE PEACE TO THE NATIONS TODAY?”






    “This, My Song, Is Made for Kerensky”




    (Being a Chant of the American Soap-Box and the Russian Revolution.)





    O market square, O slattern place,
    Is glory in your slack disgrace?
    Plump quack doctors sell their pills,
    Gentle grafters sell brass watches,
    Silly anarchists yell their ills.
    Shall we be as weird as these?
    In the breezes nod and wheeze?


         Heaven's mass is sung,
         Tomorrow's mass is sung
         In a spirit tongue
         By wind and dust and birds,
         The high mass of liberty,
         While wave the banners red:
         Sung round the soap-box,
         A mass for soldiers dead.


    When you leave your faction in the once-loved hall,
    Like a true American tongue-lash them all,
    Stand then on the corner under starry skies
    And get you a gang of the worn and the wise.
    The soldiers of the Lord may be squeaky when they rally,
    The soldiers of the Lord are a queer little army,
    But the soldiers of the Lord, before the year is through,
    Will gather the whole nation, recruit all creation,
    To smite the hosts abhorred, and all the heavens renew —
    Enforcing with the bayonet the thing the ages teach —
    Free speech!
    Free speech!


    Down with the Prussians, and all their works.
    Down with the Turks.
    Down with every army that fights against the soap-box,
    The Pericles, Socrates, Diogenes soap-box,
    The old Elijah, Jeremiah, John-the-Baptist soap-box,
    The Rousseau, Mirabeau, Danton soap-box,
    The Karl Marx, Henry George, Woodrow Wilson soap-box.
    We will make the wide earth safe for the soap-box,
    The everlasting foe of beastliness and tyranny,
    Platform of liberty: — Magna Charta liberty,
    Andrew Jackson liberty, bleeding Kansas liberty,
    New-born Russian liberty: —
    Battleship of thought,
    The round world over,
    Loved by the red-hearted,
    Loved by the broken-hearted,
    Fair young Amazon or proud tough rover,
    Loved by the lion,
    Loved by the lion,
    Loved by the lion,
    Feared by the fox.


    The Russian Revolution is the world revolution.
    Death at the bedstead of every Kaiser knocks.
    The Hohenzollern army shall be felled like the ox.
    The fatal hour is striking in all the doomsday clocks.
    The while, by freedom's alchemy
    Beauty is born.
    Ring every sleigh-bell, ring every church bell,
    Blow the clear trumpet, and listen for the answer: —
    The blast from the sky of the Gabriel horn.


    Hail the Russian picture around the little box: —
    Exiles,
    Troops in files,
    Generals in uniform,
    Mujiks in their smocks,
    And holy maiden soldiers who have cut away their locks.
    All the peoples and the nations in processions mad and great,
    Are rolling through the Russian Soul as through a city gate: —
    As though it were a street of stars that paves the shadowy deep.
    And mighty Tolstoi leads the van along the stairway steep.


    But now the people shout:
    “Hail to Kerensky,
    He hurled the tyrants out.”
    And this my song is made for Kerensky,
    Prophet of the world-wide intolerable hope,
    There on the soap-box, seasoned, dauntless,
    There amid the Russian celestial kaleidoscope,
    Flags of liberty, rags and battlesmoke.


    Moscow and Chicago!
    Come let us praise battling Kerensky,
    Bravo! Bravo!
    Comrade Kerensky the thunderstorm and rainbow!
    Comrade Kerensky, Bravo, Bravo!


    August, 1917.









    Fourth Section


    Tragedies, Comedies, and Dreams









    Our Guardian Angels and Their Children







    Where a river roars in rapids
    And doves in maples fret,
    Where peace has decked the pastures
    Our guardian angels met.


    Long they had sought each other
    In God's mysterious name,
    Had climbed the solemn chaos tides
    Alone, with hope aflame:


    Amid the demon deeps had wound
    By many a fearful way.
    As they beheld each other
    Their shout made glad the day.


    No need of purse delayed them,
    No hand of friend or kin —
    Nor menace of the bell and book,
    Nor fear of mortal sin.


    You did not speak, my girl,
    At this, our parting hour.
    Long we held each other
    And watched their deeds of power.


    They made a curious Eden.
    We saw that it was good.
    We thought with them in unison.
    We proudly understood


    Their amaranth eternal,
    Their roses strange and fair,
    The asphodels they scattered
    Upon the living air.


    They built a house of clouds
    With skilled immortal hands.
    They entered through the silver doors.
    Their wings were wedded brands.


    I labored up the valley
    To granite mountains free.
    You hurried down the river
    To Zidon by the sea.


    But at their place of meeting
    They keep a home and shrine.
    Your angel twists a purple flax,
    Then weaves a mantle fine.


    My angel, her defender
    Upstanding, spreads the light
    On painted clouds of fancy
    And mists that touch the height.


    Their sturdy babes speak kindly
    And fly and run with joy,
    Shepherding the helpless lambs —
    A Grecian girl and boy.


    These children visit Heaven
    Each year and make of worth
    All we planned and wrought in youth
    And all our tears on earth.


    From books our God has written
    They sing of high desire.
    They turn the leaves in gentleness.
    Their wings are folded fire.






    Epitaphs for Two Players






       I. Edwin Booth


    An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth
    first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California.
    There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided
    with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.



    The youth played in the blear hotel.
    The rafters gleamed with glories strange.
    And winds of mourning Elsinore
    Howling at chance and fate and change;
    Voices of old Europe's dead
    Disturbed the new-built cattle-shed,
    The street, the high and solemn range.


    The while the coyote barked afar
    All shadowy was the battlement.
    The ranch-boys huddled and grew pale,
    Youths who had come on riot bent.
    Forgot were pranks well-planned to sting.
    Behold there rose a ghostly king,
    And veils of smoking Hell were rent.


    When Edwin Booth played Hamlet, then
    The camp-drab's tears could not but flow.
    Then Romance lived and breathed and burned.
    She felt the frail queen-mother's woe,
    Thrilled for Ophelia, fond and blind,
    And Hamlet, cruel, yet so kind,
    And moaned, his proud words hurt her so.


    A haunted place, though new and harsh!
    The Indian and the Chinaman
    And Mexican were fain to learn
    What had subdued the Saxon clan.
    Why did they mumble, brood, and stare
    When the court-players curtsied fair
    And the Gonzago scene began?


    And ah, the duel scene at last!
    They cheered their prince with stamping feet.
    A death-fight in a palace! Yea,
    With velvet hangings incomplete,
    A pasteboard throne, a pasteboard crown,
    And yet a monarch tumbled down,
    A brave lad fought in splendor meet.


    Was it a palace or a barn?
    Immortal as the gods he flamed.
    There in his last great hour of rage
    His foil avenged a mother shamed.
    In duty stern, in purpose deep
    He drove that king to his black sleep
    And died, all godlike and untamed.


         . . . . .


    I was not born in that far day.
    I hear the tale from heads grown white.
    And then I walk that earlier street,
    The mining camp at candle-light.
    I meet him wrapped in musings fine
    Upon some whispering silvery line
    He yet resolves to speak aright.



    II. John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian




    In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick,
    the king's jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children.



    Yorick is dead. Boy Hamlet walks forlorn
    Beneath the battlements of Elsinore.
    Where are those oddities and capers now
    That used to “set the table on a roar”?


    And do his bauble-bells beyond the clouds
    Ring out, and shake with mirth the planets bright?
    No doubt he brings the blessed dead good cheer,
    But silence broods on Elsinore tonight.


    That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old,
    Upon her battered doll's staunch bosom weeps.
    (“O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.”)
    With tear-burned face, at last the darling sleeps.


    Hamlet himself could not give cheer or help,
    Though firm and brave, with his boy-face controlled.
    For every game they started out to play
    Yorick invented, in the days of old.


    The times are out of joint! O cursed spite!
    The noble jester Yorick comes no more.
    And Hamlet hides his tears in boyish pride
    By some lone turret-stair of Elsinore.






    Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress




    In “Man's Genesis", “The Wild Girl of the Sierras", “The Wharf Rat",
    “A Girl of the Paris Streets", etc.





    I


    The arts are old, old as the stones
    From which man carved the sphinx austere.
    Deep are the days the old arts bring:
    Ten thousand years of yesteryear.



    II


    She is madonna in an art
    As wild and young as her sweet eyes:
    A frail dew flower from this hot lamp
    That is today's divine surprise.


    Despite raw lights and gloating mobs
    She is not seared: a picture still:
    Rare silk the fine director's hand
    May weave for magic if he will.


    When ancient films have crumbled like
    Papyrus rolls of Egypt's day,
    Let the dust speak: “Her pride was high,
    All but the artist hid away:


    “Kin to the myriad artist clan
    Since time began, whose work is dear.”
    The deep new ages come with her,
    Tomorrow's years of yesteryear.






    Two Old Crows







    Two old crows sat on a fence rail,
    Two old crows sat on a fence rail,
    Thinking of effect and cause,
    Of weeds and flowers,
    And nature's laws.
    One of them muttered, one of them stuttered,
    One of them stuttered, one of them muttered.
    Each of them thought far more than he uttered.
    One crow asked the other crow a riddle.
    One crow asked the other crow a riddle:
    The muttering crow
    Asked the stuttering crow,
    “Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?
    Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?”
    “Bee-cause,” said the other crow,
    “Bee-cause,
    B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.”


    Just then a bee flew close to their rail: —
    “Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ.”
    And those two black crows
    Turned pale,
    And away those crows did sail.
    Why?
    B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.
    B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.
    “Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZ.”






    The Drunkard's Funeral







    “Yes,” said the sister with the little pinched face,
    The busy little sister with the funny little tract: —
    “This is the climax, the grand fifth act.
    There rides the proud, at the finish of his race.
    There goes the hearse, the mourners cry,
    The respectable hearse goes slowly by.
    The wife of the dead has money in her purse,
    The children are in health, so it might have been worse.
    That fellow in the coffin led a life most foul.
    A fierce defender of the red bar-tender,
    At the church he would rail,
    At the preacher he would howl.
    He planted every deviltry to see it grow.
    He wasted half his income on the lewd and the low.
    He would trade engender for the red bar-tender,
    He would homage render to the red bar-tender,
    And in ultimate surrender to the red bar-tender,
    He died of the tremens, as crazy as a loon,
    And his friends were glad, when the end came soon.
    There goes the hearse, the mourners cry,
    The respectable hearse goes slowly by.
    And now, good friends, since you see how it ends,
    Let each nation-mender flay the red bar-tender, —
    Abhor
    The transgression
    Of the red bar-tender, —
    Ruin
    The profession
    Of the red bar-tender:
    Force him into business where his work does good.
    Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood,
    Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood.


    “The moral,
    The conclusion,
    The verdict now you know: —
    `The saloon must go,
    The saloon must go,
    The saloon,
    The saloon,
    The saloon,
    Must go.'“


    “You are right, little sister,” I said to myself,
    “You are right, good sister,” I said.
    “Though you wear a mussy bonnet
    On your little gray head,
    You are right, little sister,” I said.






    The Raft







    The whole world on a raft! A King is here,
    The record of his grandeur but a smear.
    Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate
    That makes the band upon his whims to wait?
    Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled.
    Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild
    Until they shower their pennies like spring rain
    That he may preach upon the Spanish main.
    What landlord, lawyer, voodoo-man has yet
    A better native right to make men sweat?


    The whole world on a raft! A Duke is here
    At sight of whose lank jaw the muses leer.
    Journeyman-printer, lamb with ferret eyes,
    In life's skullduggery he takes the prize —
    Yet stands at twilight wrapped in Hamlet dreams.
    Into his eyes the Mississippi gleams.
    The sandbar sings in moonlit veils of foam.
    A candle shines from one lone cabin home.
    The waves reflect it like a drunken star.
    A banjo and a hymn are heard afar.
    No solace on the lazy shore excels
    The Duke's blue castle with its steamer-bells.
    The floor is running water, and the roof
    The stars' brocade with cloudy warp and woof.


    And on past sorghum fields the current swings.
    To Christian Jim the Mississippi sings.
    This prankish wave-swept barque has won its place,
    A ship of jesting for the human race.
    But do you laugh when Jim bows down forlorn
    His babe, his deaf Elizabeth to mourn?
    And do you laugh, when Jim, from Huck apart
    Gropes through the rain and night with breaking heart?


    But now that imp is here and we can smile,
    Jim's child and guardian this long-drawn while.
    With knife and heavy gun, a hunter keen,
    He stops for squirrel-meat in islands green.
    The eternal gamin, sleeping half the day,
    Then stripped and sleek, a river-fish at play.
    And then well-dressed, ashore, he sees life spilt.
    The river-bank is one bright crazy-quilt
    Of patch-work dream, of wrath more red than lust,
    Where long-haired feudist Hotspurs bite the dust . . .
    This Huckleberry Finn is but the race,
    America, still lovely in disgrace,
    New childhood of the world, that blunders on
    And wonders at the darkness and the dawn,
    The poor damned human race, still unimpressed
    With its damnation, all its gamin breast
    Chorteling at dukes and kings with nigger Jim,
    Then plotting for their fall, with jestings grim.


    Behold a Republic
    Where a river speaks to men
    And cries to those that love its ways,
    Answering again
    When in the heart's extravagance
    The rascals bend to say
    “O singing Mississippi
    Shine, sing for us today.”


    But who is this in sweeping Oxford gown
    Who steers the raft, or ambles up and down,
    Or throws his gown aside, and there in white
    Stands gleaming like a pillar of the night?
    The lion of high courts, with hoary mane,
    Fierce jester that this boyish court will gain —
    Mark Twain!
    The bad world's idol:
    Old Mark Twain!


    He takes his turn as watchman with the rest,
    With secret transports to the stars addressed,
    With nightlong broodings upon cosmic law,
    With daylong laughter at this world so raw.


    All praise to Emerson and Whitman, yet
    The best they have to say, their sons forget.
    But who can dodge this genius of the stream,
    The Mississippi Valley's laughing dream?
    He is the artery that finds the sea
    In this the land of slaves, and boys still free.
    He is the river, and they one and all
    Sail on his breast, and to each other call.


    Come let us disgrace ourselves,
    Knock the stuffed gods from their shelves,
    And cinders at the schoolhouse fling.
    Come let us disgrace ourselves,
    And live on a raft with gray Mark Twain
    And Huck and Jim
    And the Duke and the King.






    The Ghosts of the Buffaloes







    Last night at black midnight I woke with a cry,
    The windows were shaking, there was thunder on high,
    The floor was a-tremble, the door was a-jar,
    White fires, crimson fires, shone from afar.
    I rushed to the door yard. The city was gone.
    My home was a hut without orchard or lawn.
    It was mud-smear and logs near a whispering stream,
    Nothing else built by man could I see in my dream . . .
    Then . . .
    Ghost-kings came headlong, row upon row,
    Gods of the Indians, torches aglow.


    They mounted the bear and the elk and the deer,
    And eagles gigantic, aged and sere,
    They rode long-horn cattle, they cried “A-la-la.”
    They lifted the knife, the bow, and the spear,
    They lifted ghost-torches from dead fires below,
    The midnight made grand with the cry “A-la-la.”
    The midnight made grand with a red-god charge,
    A red-god show,
    A red-god show,
    “A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la.”


    With bodies like bronze, and terrible eyes
    Came the rank and the file, with catamount cries,
    Gibbering, yipping, with hollow-skull clacks,
    Riding white bronchos with skeleton backs,
    Scalp-hunters, beaded and spangled and bad,
    Naked and lustful and foaming and mad,
    Flashing primeval demoniac scorn,
    Blood-thirst and pomp amid darkness reborn,
    Power and glory that sleep in the grass
    While the winds and the snows and the great rains pass.
    They crossed the gray river, thousands abreast,
    They rode in infinite lines to the west,
    Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam,
    Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home,
    The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled,
    And on past those far golden splendors they whirled.
    They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep.
    And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep.


    And the wind crept by
    Alone, unkempt, unsatisfied,
    The wind cried and cried —
    Muttered of massacres long past,
    Buffaloes in shambles vast . . .
    An owl said: “Hark, what is a-wing?”
    I heard a cricket carolling,
    I heard a cricket carolling,
    I heard a cricket carolling.


    Then . . .
    Snuffing the lightning that crashed from on high
    Rose royal old buffaloes, row upon row.
    The lords of the prairie came galloping by.
    And I cried in my heart “A-la-la, a-la-la,
    A red-god show,
    A red-god show,
    A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la.”


    Buffaloes, buffaloes, thousands abreast,
    A scourge and amazement, they swept to the west.
    With black bobbing noses, with red rolling tongues,
    Coughing forth steam from their leather-wrapped lungs,
    Cows with their calves, bulls big and vain,
    Goring the laggards, shaking the mane,
    Stamping flint feet, flashing moon eyes,
    Pompous and owlish, shaggy and wise.
    Like sea-cliffs and caves resounded their ranks
    With shoulders like waves, and undulant flanks.
    Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam,
    Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home,
    The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled,
    And on past those far golden splendors they whirled.
    They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep,
    And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep.


    I heard a cricket's cymbals play,
    A scarecrow lightly flapped his rags,
    And a pan that hung by his shoulder rang,
    Rattled and thumped in a listless way,
    And now the wind in the chimney sang,
    The wind in the chimney,
    The wind in the chimney,
    The wind in the chimney,
    Seemed to say: —
    “Dream, boy, dream,
    If you anywise can.
    To dream is the work
    Of beast or man.
    Life is the west-going dream-storm's breath,
    Life is a dream, the sigh of the skies,
    The breath of the stars, that nod on their pillows
    With their golden hair mussed over their eyes.”
    The locust played on his musical wing,
    Sang to his mate of love's delight.
    I heard the whippoorwill's soft fret.
    I heard a cricket carolling,
    I heard a cricket carolling,
    I heard a cricket say: “Good-night, good-night,
    Good-night, good-night, . . . good-night.”






    The Broncho that Would Not Be Broken







    A little colt —broncho, loaned to the farm
    To be broken in time without fury or harm,
    Yet black crows flew past you, shouting alarm,
    Calling “Beware,” with lugubrious singing . . .
    The butterflies there in the bush were romancing,
    The smell of the grass caught your soul in a trance,
    So why be a-fearing the spurs and the traces,
    O broncho that would not be broken of dancing?


    You were born with the pride of the lords great and olden
    Who danced, through the ages, in corridors golden.
    In all the wide farm-place the person most human.
    You spoke out so plainly with squealing and capering,
    With whinnying, snorting, contorting and prancing,
    As you dodged your pursuers, looking askance,
    With Greek-footed figures, and Parthenon paces,
    O broncho that would not be broken of dancing.


    The grasshoppers cheered. “Keep whirling,” they said.
    The insolent sparrows called from the shed
    “If men will not laugh, make them wish they were dead.”
    But arch were your thoughts, all malice displacing,
    Though the horse-killers came, with snake-whips advancing.
    You bantered and cantered away your last chance.
    And they scourged you, with Hell in their speech and their faces,
    O broncho that would not be broken of dancing.


    “Nobody cares for you,” rattled the crows,
    As you dragged the whole reaper, next day, down the rows.
    The three mules held back, yet you danced on your toes.
    You pulled like a racer, and kept the mules chasing.
    You tangled the harness with bright eyes side-glancing,
    While the drunk driver bled you —a pole for a lance —
    And the giant mules bit at you —keeping their places.
    O broncho that would not be broken of dancing.


    In that last afternoon your boyish heart broke.
    The hot wind came down like a sledge-hammer stroke.
    The blood-sucking flies to a rare feast awoke.
    And they searched out your wounds, your death-warrant tracing.
    And the merciful men, their religion enhancing,
    Stopped the red reaper, to give you a chance.
    Then you died on the prairie, and scorned all disgraces,
    O broncho that would not be broken of dancing.

    Souvenir of Great Bend, Kansas.






    The Prairie Battlements




    (To Edgar Lee Masters, with great respect.)





    Here upon the prairie
    Is our ancestral hall.
    Agate is the dome,
    Cornelian the wall.
    Ghouls are in the cellar,
    But fays upon the stairs.
    And here lived old King Silver Dreams,
    Always at his prayers.


    Here lived grey Queen Silver Dreams,
    Always singing psalms,
    And haughty Grandma Silver Dreams,
    Throned with folded palms.
    Here played cousin Alice.
    Her soul was best of all.
    And every fairy loved her,
    In our ancestral hall.


    Alice has a prairie grave.
    The King and Queen lie low,
    And aged Grandma Silver Dreams,
    Four tombstones in a row.
    But still in snow and sunshine
    Stands our ancestral hall.
    Agate is the dome,
    Cornelian the wall.
    And legends walk about,
    And proverbs, with proud airs.
    Ghouls are in the cellar,
    But fays upon the stairs.






    The Flower of Mending




    (To Eudora, after I had had certain dire adventures.)





    When Dragon-fly would fix his wings,
    When Snail would patch his house,
    When moths have marred the overcoat
    Of tender Mister Mouse,


    The pretty creatures go with haste
    To the sunlit blue-grass hills
    Where the Flower of Mending yields the wax
    And webs to help their ills.


    The hour the coats are waxed and webbed
    They fall into a dream,
    And when they wake the ragged robes
    Are joined without a seam.


    My heart is but a dragon-fly,
    My heart is but a mouse,
    My heart is but a haughty snail
    In a little stony house.


    Your hand was honey-comb to heal,
    Your voice a web to bind.
    You were a Mending Flower to me
    To cure my heart and mind.






    Alone in the Wind, on the Prairie







    I know a seraph who has golden eyes,
    And hair of gold, and body like the snow.
    Here in the wind I dream her unbound hair
    Is blowing round me, that desire's sweet glow
    Has touched her pale keen face, and willful mien.
    And though she steps as one in manner born
    To tread the forests of fair Paradise,
    Dark memory's wood she chooses to adorn.
    Here with bowed head, bashful with half-desire
    She glides into my yesterday's deep dream,
    All glowing by the misty ferny cliff
    Beside the far forbidden thundering stream.
    Within my dream I shake with the old flood.
    I fear its going, ere the spring days go.
    Yet pray the glory may have deathless years,
    And kiss her hair, and sweet throat like the snow.






    To Lady Jane







    Romance was always young.
    You come today
    Just eight years old
    With marvellous dark hair.
    Younger than Dante found you
    When you turned
    His heart into the way
    That found the heavenly stair.


    Perhaps we must be strangers.
    I confess
    My soul this hour is Dante's,
    And your care
    Should be for dolls
    Whose painted hands caress
    Your marvellous dark hair.


    Romance, with moonflower face
    And morning eyes,
    And lips whose thread of scarlet prophesies
    The canticles of a coming king unknown,
    Remember, when you join him
    On his throne,
    Even me, your far off troubadour,
    And wear
    For me some trifling rose
    Beneath your veil,
    Dying a royal death,
    Happy and pale,
    Choked by the passion,
    The wonder and the snare,
    The glory and despair
    That still will haunt and own
    Your marvellous dark hair.






    How I Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven







    Oh, once I walked in Heaven, all alone
    Upon the sacred cliffs above the sky.
    God and the angels, and the gleaming saints
    Had journeyed out into the stars to die.


    They had gone forth to win far citizens,
    Bought at great price, bring happiness for all:
    By such a harvest make a holier town
    And put new life within old Zion's wall.


    Each chose a far-off planet for his home,
    Speaking of love and mercy, truth and right,
    Envied and cursed, thorn-crowned and scourged in time,
    Each tasted death on his appointed night.


    Then resurrection day from sphere to sphere
    Sped on, with all the POWERS arisen again,
    While with them came in clouds recruited hosts
    Of sun-born strangers and of earth-born men.


    And on that day gray prophet saints went down
    And poured atoning blood upon the deep,
    Till every warrior of old Hell flew free
    And all the torture fires were laid asleep.


    And Hell's lost company I saw return
    Clear-eyed, with plumes of white, the demons bold
    Climbed with the angels now on Jacob's stair,
    And built a better Zion than the old.


         . . . . .


    And yet I walked alone on azure cliffs
    A lifetime long, and loved each untrimmed vine:
    The rotted harps, the swords of rusted gold,
    The jungles of all Heaven then were mine.


    Oh mesas and throne-mountains that I found!
    Oh strange and shaking thoughts that touched me there,
    Ere I beheld the bright returning wings
    That came to spoil my secret, silent lair!









    Fifth Section. The Poem Games











    An Account of the Poem Games







    In the summer of 1916 in the parlor of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody;
    and in the following winter in the Chicago Little Theatre,
    under the auspices of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse; and in Mandel Hall,
    the University of Chicago, under the auspices of the Senior Class, —
    these Poem Games were presented. Miss Eleanor Dougherty
    was the dancer throughout. The entire undertaking developed
    through the generous cooperation and advice of Mrs. William Vaughn Moody.
    The writer is exceedingly grateful to Mrs. Moody and all concerned
    for making place for the idea. Now comes the test of its vitality.
    Can it go on in the absence of its initiators?


    Mr. Lewellyn Jones, of the Chicago Evening Post, announced the affair
    as a “rhythmic picnic”. Mr. Maurice Browne of the Chicago Little Theatre
    said Miss Dougherty was at the beginning of the old Greek Tragic Dance.
    Somewhere between lies the accomplishment.


    In the Congo volume, as is indicated in the margins,
    the meaning of a few of the verses is aided by chanting.
    In the Poem Games the English word is still first in importance,
    the dancer comes second, the chanter third. The marginal directions
    of King Solomon indicate the spirit in which all the pantomime was developed.
    Miss Dougherty designed her own costumes, and worked out
    her own stage business for King Solomon, The Potatoes' Dance,
    The King of Yellow Butterflies and Aladdin and the Jinn (The Congo, page 140).
    In the last, “`I am your slave,' said the Jinn” was repeated four times
    at the end of each stanza.


    The Poem Game idea was first indorsed in the Wellesley kindergarten,
    by the children. They improvised pantomime and dance for the Potatoes' Dance,
    while the writer chanted it, and while Professor Hamilton C. Macdougall
    of the Wellesley musical department followed on the piano
    the outline of the jingle. Later Professor Macdougall very kindly wrote down
    his piano rendition. A study of this transcript helps to confirm the idea
    that when the cadences of a bit of verse are a little exaggerated,
    they are tunes, yet of a truth they are tunes which can be
    but vaguely recorded by notation or expressed by an instrument.
    The author of this book is now against instrumental music
    in this type of work. It blurs the English.


    Professor Macdougall has in various conversations helped the author
    toward a Poem Game theory. He agrees that neither the dancing
    nor the chanting nor any other thing should be allowed to run away
    with the original intention of the words. The chanting should not be carried
    to the point where it seeks to rival conventional musical composition.
    The dancer should be subordinated to the natural rhythms of English speech,
    and not attempt to incorporate bodily all the precedents
    of professional dancing.


    Speaking generally, poetic ideas can be conveyed word by word,
    faster than musical feeling. The repetitions in the Poem Games
    are to keep the singing, the dancing and the ideas at one pace.
    The repetitions may be varied according to the necessities
    of the individual dancer. Dancing is slower than poetry and faster than music
    in developing the same thoughts. In folk dances and vaudeville,
    the verse, music, and dancing are on so simple a basis the time elements
    can be easily combined. Likewise the rhythms and the other elements.


    Miss Dougherty is particularly illustrative in her pantomime,
    but there were many verses she looked over and rejected
    because they could not be rendered without blurring the original intent.
    Possibly every poem in the world has its dancer somewhere waiting,
    who can dance but that one poem. Certainly those poems would be
    most successful in games, where the tone color is so close to the meaning
    that any exaggeration of that color by dancing and chanting
    only makes the story clearer. The writer would like to see some one try
    Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.
    Certainly in those poems the decorative rhythm and the meaning
    are absolutely one.


    With no dancing evolutions, the author of this book
    has chanted John Brown and King Solomon for the last two years
    for many audiences. It took but a minute to teach the people the responses.
    As a rule they had no advance notice they were going to sing.
    The versifier sang the parts of the King and Queen in turn,
    and found each audience perfectly willing to be the oxen, the sweethearts,
    the swans, the sons, the shepherds, etc.


    A year ago the writer had the honor of chanting for
    the Florence Fleming Noyes school of dancers. In one short evening
    they made the first section of the Congo into an incantation,
    the King Solomon into an extraordinarily graceful series of tableaus,
    and the Potatoes' Dance into a veritable whirlwind.
    Later came the more elaborately prepared Chicago experiment.


    In the King of Yellow Butterflies and the Potatoes' Dance
    Miss Dougherty occupied the entire eye of the audience and interpreted,
    while the versifier chanted the poems as a semi-invisible orchestra,
    by the side of the curtain. For Aladdin and for King Solomon
    Miss Dougherty and the writer divided the stage between them,
    but the author was little more than the orchestra. The main intention
    was carried out, which was to combine the work of the dancer
    with the words of the production and the responses of the audience.


    The present rhymer has no ambitions as a stage manager.
    The Poem Game idea, in its rhythmic picnic stage, is recommended to amateurs,
    its further development to be on their own initiative.
    Informal parties might divide into groups of dancers and groups of chanters.
    The whole might be worked out in the spirit in which
    children play King William was King James' Son, London Bridge,
    or As We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. And the author of this book
    would certainly welcome the tragic dance, if Miss Dougherty
    will gather a company about her and go forward, using any acceptable poems,
    new or old. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon is perhaps
    the most literal and rhythmic example of the idea we have in English,
    though it may not be available when tried out.


    The main revolution necessary for dancing improvisers,
    who would go a longer way with the Poem Game idea,
    is to shake off the Isadora Duncan and the Russian precedents for a while,
    and abolish the orchestra and piano, replacing all these
    with the natural meaning and cadences of English speech.
    The work would come closer to acting, than dancing is now conceived.






    The King of Yellow Butterflies




    (A Poem Game.)





    The King of Yellow Butterflies,
    The King of Yellow Butterflies,
    The King of Yellow Butterflies,
    Now orders forth his men.
    He says “The time is almost here
    When violets bloom again.”
    Adown the road the fickle rout
    Goes flashing proud and bold,
    Adown the road the fickle rout
    Goes flashing proud and bold,
    Adown the road the fickle rout
    Goes flashing proud and bold,
    They shiver by the shallow pools,
    They shiver by the shallow pools,
    They shiver by the shallow pools,
    And whimper of the cold.
    They drink and drink. A frail pretense!
    They love to pose and preen.
    Each pool is but a looking glass,
    Where their sweet wings are seen.
    Each pool is but a looking glass,
    Where their sweet wings are seen.
    Each pool is but a looking glass,
    Where their sweet wings are seen.
    Gentlemen adventurers! Gypsies every whit!
    They live on what they steal. Their wings
    By briars are frayed a bit.
    Their loves are light. They have no house.
    And if it rains today,
    They'll climb into your cattle-shed,
    They'll climb into your cattle-shed,
    They'll climb into your cattle-shed,
    And hide them in the hay,
    And hide them in the hay,
    And hide them in the hay,
    And hide them in the hay.






    The Potatoes' Dance




    (A Poem Game.)





    I


    “Down cellar,” said the cricket,
    “Down cellar,” said the cricket,
    “Down cellar,” said the cricket,
    “I saw a ball last night,
    In honor of a lady,
    In honor of a lady,
    In honor of a lady,
    Whose wings were pearly-white.
    The breath of bitter weather,
    The breath of bitter weather,
    The breath of bitter weather,
    Had smashed the cellar pane.
    We entertained a drift of leaves,
    We entertained a drift of leaves,
    We entertained a drift of leaves,
    And then of snow and rain.
    But we were dressed for winter,
    But we were dressed for winter,
    But we were dressed for winter,
    And loved to hear it blow
    In honor of the lady,
    In honor of the lady,
    In honor of the lady,
    Who makes potatoes grow,
    Our guest the Irish lady,
    The tiny Irish lady,
    The airy Irish lady,
    Who makes potatoes grow.



    II


    “Potatoes were the waiters,
    Potatoes were the waiters,
    Potatoes were the waiters,
    Potatoes were the band,
    Potatoes were the dancers
    Kicking up the sand,
    Kicking up the sand,
    Kicking up the sand,
    Potatoes were the dancers
    Kicking up the sand.
    Their legs were old burnt matches,
    Their legs were old burnt matches,
    Their legs were old burnt matches,
    Their arms were just the same.
    They jigged and whirled and scrambled,
    Jigged and whirled and scrambled,
    Jigged and whirled and scrambled,
    In honor of the dame,
    The noble Irish lady
    Who makes potatoes dance,
    The witty Irish lady,
    The saucy Irish lady,
    The laughing Irish lady
    Who makes potatoes prance.



    III


    “There was just one sweet potato.
    He was golden brown and slim.
    The lady loved his dancing,
    The lady loved his dancing,
    The lady loved his dancing,
    She danced all night with him,
    She danced all night with him.
    Alas, he wasn't Irish.
    So when she flew away,
    They threw him in the coal-bin,
    And there he is today,
    Where they cannot hear his sighs
    And his weeping for the lady,
    The glorious Irish lady,
    The beauteous Irish lady,
    Who
    Gives
    Potatoes
    Eyes.”






    The Booker Washington Trilogy




    A Memorial to Booker T. Washington




       I. Simon Legree


    A Negro Sermon. (To be read in your own variety of negro dialect.)



    Legree's big house was white and green.
    His cotton-fields were the best to be seen.
    He had strong horses and opulent cattle,
    And bloodhounds bold, with chains that would rattle.
    His garret was full of curious things:
    Books of magic, bags of gold,
    And rabbits' feet on long twine strings.
    BUT HE WENT DOWN TO THE DEVIL.


    Legree he sported a brass-buttoned coat,
    A snake-skin necktie, a blood-red shirt.
    Legree he had a beard like a goat,
    And a thick hairy neck, and eyes like dirt.
    His puffed-out cheeks were fish-belly white,
    He had great long teeth, and an appetite.
    He ate raw meat, 'most every meal,
    And rolled his eyes till the cat would squeal.
    His fist was an enormous size
    To mash poor niggers that told him lies:
    He was surely a witch-man in disguise.
    BUT HE WENT DOWN TO THE DEVIL.


    He wore hip-boots, and would wade all day
    To capture his slaves that had fled away.
    BUT HE WENT DOWN TO THE DEVIL.


    He beat poor Uncle Tom to death
    Who prayed for Legree with his last breath.
    Then Uncle Tom to Eva flew,
    To the high sanctoriums bright and new;
    And Simon Legree stared up beneath,
    And cracked his heels, and ground his teeth:
    AND WENT DOWN TO THE DEVIL.


    He crossed the yard in the storm and gloom;
    He went into his grand front room.
    He said, “I killed him, and I don't care.”
    He kicked a hound, he gave a swear;
    He tightened his belt, he took a lamp,
    Went down cellar to the webs and damp.
    There in the middle of the mouldy floor
    He heaved up a slab, he found a door —
    AND WENT DOWN TO THE DEVIL.


    His lamp blew out, but his eyes burned bright.
    Simon Legree stepped down all night —
    DOWN, DOWN TO THE DEVIL.
    Simon Legree he reached the place,
    He saw one half of the human race,
    He saw the Devil on a wide green throne,
    Gnawing the meat from a big ham-bone,
    And he said to Mister Devil:


     “I see that you have much to eat —
     A red ham-bone is surely sweet.
     I see that you have lion's feet;
     I see your frame is fat and fine,
     I see you drink your poison wine —
     Blood and burning turpentine.”


    And the Devil said to Simon Legree:
     “I like your style, so wicked and free.
     Come sit and share my throne with me,
     And let us bark and revel.”
    And there they sit and gnash their teeth,
    And each one wears a hop-vine wreath.
    They are matching pennies and shooting craps,
    They are playing poker and taking naps.
    And old Legree is fat and fine:
    He eats the fire, he drinks the wine —
    Blood and burning turpentine —
     DOWN, DOWN WITH THE DEVIL;
      DOWN, DOWN WITH THE DEVIL;
       DOWN, DOWN WITH THE DEVIL.





    II. John Brown




    (To be sung by a leader and chorus, the leader singing the body of the poem,
    while the chorus interrupts with the question.)



    I've been to Palestine.
       WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE?
    I saw the ark of Noah —
    It was made of pitch and pine.
    I saw old Father Noah
    Asleep beneath his vine.
    I saw Shem, Ham and Japhet
    Standing in a line.
    I saw the tower of Babel
    In the gorgeous sunrise shine —
    By a weeping willow tree
    Beside the Dead Sea.


    I've been to Palestine.
       WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE?
    I saw abominations
    And Gadarene swine.
    I saw the sinful Canaanites
    Upon the shewbread dine,
    And spoil the temple vessels
    And drink the temple wine.
    I saw Lot's wife, a pillar of salt
    Standing in the brine —
    By a weeping willow tree
    Beside the Dead Sea.


    I've been to Palestine.
       WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE?
    Cedars on Mount Lebanon,
    Gold in Ophir's mine,
    And a wicked generation
    Seeking for a sign
    And Baal's howling worshippers
    Their god with leaves entwine.
    And . . .
    I saw the war-horse ramping
    And shake his forelock fine —
    By a weeping willow tree
    Beside the Dead Sea.


    I've been to Palestine.
       WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE?
    Old John Brown.
    Old John Brown.
    I saw his gracious wife
    Dressed in a homespun gown.
    I saw his seven sons
    Before his feet bow down.
    And he marched with his seven sons,
    His wagons and goods and guns,
    To his campfire by the sea,
    By the waves of Galilee.


    I've been to Palestine.
       WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE?
    I saw the harp and psalt'ry
    Played for Old John Brown.
    I heard the ram's horn blow,
    Blow for Old John Brown.
    I saw the Bulls of Bashan —
    They cheered for Old John Brown.
    I saw the big Behemoth —
    He cheered for Old John Brown.
    I saw the big Leviathan —
    He cheered for Old John Brown.
    I saw the Angel Gabriel
    Great power to him assign.
    I saw him fight the Canaanites
    And set God's Israel free.
    I saw him when the war was done
    In his rustic chair recline —
    By his campfire by the sea,
    By the waves of Galilee.


    I've been to Palestine.
       WHAT DID YOU SEE IN PALESTINE?
    Old John Brown.
    Old John Brown.
    And there he sits
    To judge the world.
    His hunting-dogs
    At his feet are curled.
    His eyes half-closed,
    But John Brown sees
    The ends of the earth,
    The Day of Doom.
    And his shot-gun lies
    Across his knees —
    Old John Brown,
    Old John Brown.

    III. King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba


    (A Poem Game.)


    “And when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, . . .
    she came to prove him with hard questions.”



    The men's leader rises as he sees the Queen unveiling
     and approaching a position that gives her half of the stage.


       Men's Leader: The Queen of Sheba came to see King Solomon.
    He bows three times.
                        I was King Solomon,
                        I was King Solomon,
                        I was King Solomon.


    She bows three times.
       Women's Leader: I was the Queen,
                        I was the Queen,
                        I was the Queen.


       Both Leaders: We will be king and queen,
    They stand together stretching their hands over the land.
                        Reigning on mountains green,
                        Happy and free
                        For ten thousand years.


    They stagger forward as though carrying a yoke together.
       Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred oxen.


       Congregation: We were the oxen.


    Here King and Queen pause at the footlights.
       Both Leaders: You shall feel goads no more.
    They walk backward, throwing off the yoke and rejoicing.
                        Walk dreadful roads no more,
                        Free from your loads
                        For ten thousand years.


    The men's leader goes forward, the women's leader dances round him.
       Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred sweethearts.


    Here he pauses at the footlights.
       Congregation: We were the sweethearts.


    He walks backward. Both clap their hands to the measure.
       Both Leaders: You shall dance round again,
                        You shall dance round again,
                        Cymbals shall sound again,
                        Cymbals shall sound again,
    The Queen appears to gather wildflowers
                        Wildflowers be found
                        For ten thousand years,
                        Wildflowers be found
                        For ten thousand years.


    He continues to command the congregation, the woman to dance.
     He goes forward to the footlights.>
       Both Leaders: And every sweetheart had four hundred swans.


       Congregation: We were the swans.


    The King walks backward.

       Both Leaders: You shall spread wings again,
                        You shall spread wings again,
    Here a special dance, by the Queen: swans flying in circles.

                        Fly in soft rings again,
                        Fly in soft rings again,
                        Swim by cool springs
                        For ten thousand years,
                        Swim by cool springs,
                        For ten thousand years.


    The refrain "King Solomon" may be intoned by the men's leader
     whenever it is needed to enable the women's leader to get to
     her starting point. All the refrains may be likewise used.>
       Men's Leader: King Solomon,
                        King Solomon.


       Women's Leader: The Queen of Sheba asked him like a lady,
    They bow to each other —then give a pantomime
     indicating a great rose garden.>
                        Bowing most politely:
                        “What makes the roses bloom
                        Over the mossy tomb,
                        Driving away the gloom
                        Ten thousand years?”


       Men's Leader: King Solomon made answer to the lady,
    They bow and confer. The Queen reserved, but taking cognizance.
    The King wooing with ornate gestures of respect, and courtly animation.>
                        Bowing most politely:
                        “They bloom forever thinking of your beauty,
                        Your step so queenly and your eyes so lovely.
                        These keep the roses fair,
                        Young and without a care,
                        Making so sweet the air,
                        Ten thousand years.”


    The two, with a manner almost a cake walk, go forward.

       Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred sons.


    On this line, King and Queen pause before the footlights.

       Congregation: We were the sons.


    Pantomime of crowning the audience.

       Both Leaders: Crowned by the throngs again,
    On this line they walk backward, playing great imaginary harps.

                        You shall make songs again,
                        Singing along
                        For ten thousand years.


    They go forward in a pony gallop, then stand pawing.

       Both Leaders: He gave each son four hundred prancing ponies.


       Congregation: We were the ponies.


    They nod their heads, starting to walk backward.

       Both Leaders: You shall eat hay again,

                        In forests play again,
                        Rampage and neigh
                        For ten thousand years.


       Men's Leader: King Solomon he asked the Queen of Sheba,
    They bow to each other, standing so that
     each one commands half of the stage.>
                        Bowing most politely:
                        “What makes the oak-tree grow
                        Hardy in sun and snow,
                        Never by wind brought low
                        Ten thousand years?”


       Women's Leader: The Queen of Sheba answered like a lady,
    They bow to each other, again, with pantomime indicating a forest.

                        Bowing most politely:
                        “It blooms forever thinking of your wisdom,
                        Your brave heart and the way you rule your kingdom.
                        These keep the oak secure,
                        Weaving its leafy lure,
                        Dreaming by fountains pure
                        Ten thousand years.”


    They go to the footlights with a sailor's lurch and hitch.

       Both Leaders: The Queen of Sheba had four hundred sailors.


    The King and Queen pause.

       Congregation: We were the sailors.


       Both Leaders: You shall bring spice and ore
    They walk backward with slow long-armed gestures
     indicating the entire horizon line.>
                        Over the ocean's floor,
                        Shipmates once more,
                        For ten thousand years.


       Women's Leader: The Queen of Sheba asked him like a lady,
    They bow to each other, the Queen indicating the depths of the sea.

                        Bowing most politely:
                        “Why is the sea so deep,
                        What secret does it keep
                        While tides a-roaring leap
                        Ten thousand years?”


       Men's Leader: King Solomon made answer to the lady,
    They bow to each other, then confer; the Queen reserved,
     but taking cognizance, the King wooing with ornate gestures
     of respect and courtly admiration.>
                        Bowing most politely:
                        “My love for you is like the stormy ocean —
                        Too deep to understand,
                        Bending to your command,
                        Bringing your ships to land
                        Ten thousand years.”
                        King Solomon,
                        King Solomon.


    They go to the footlights with the greatest possible strut.

       Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred chieftains.


       Congregation: We were the chieftains.


    The leaders stand with arms proudly folded.

       Both Leaders: You shall be proud again,
    They walk backward haughtily, laughing on the last lines.

                        Dazzle the crowd again,
                        Laughing aloud
                        For ten thousand years.


    From here on the whole production to be
     much more solemn, elevated, religious.>


    The leaders go forward to the footlights carrying imaginary torches.

       Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred shepherds.


    The man and woman pause at the footlights.

       Congregation: We were the shepherds.


    They wander over the stage as though looking for lost lambs,
     with torches held high.>
       Both Leaders: You shall have torches bright,
                        Watching the folds by night,
                        Guarding the lambs aright,
                        Ten thousand years.


       Men's Leader: King Solomon he asked the Queen of Sheba,
    The King kneels, and indicates the entire sky with one long slow gesture.

                        Bowing most politely:
                        “Why are the stars so high,
                        There in the velvet sky,
                        Rolling in rivers by,
                        Ten thousand years?”


       Women's Leader: The Queen of Sheba answered like a lady,
    The Queen kneels opposite the King,
     and gives the same gesture as she answers.>
                        Bowing most politely:
                        “They're singing of your kingdom to the angels,
                        They guide your chariot with their lamps and candles,
                        Therefore they burn so far —
                        So you can drive your car
                        Up where the prophets are,
                        Ten thousand years.”


       Men's Leader: King Solomon,
                        King Solomon.


       Both Leaders: King Solomon he kept the Sabbath holy.
    The two stand, commanding the audience.

                        And spoke with tongues in prophet words so mighty
    The man and woman stamp and whirl with great noise and solemnity.

                        We stamped and whirled and wept and shouted: —


       Congregation Rises and Joins the Song:
                        . . . . “Glory.”
                        We were his people.


    On these two lines, man and woman stamp and whirl again,
     gravely, magnificently.>
       Both Leaders: You shall be wild and gay,
                        Green trees shall deck your way,
    On these two lines they kneel, commanding the audience.

                        Sunday be every day,
                        Ten thousand years.


    Now they rise and bow to each other and the audience,
     maintaining a certain intention of benediction.>
                        King Solomon,
                        King Solomon.






    How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza




    (A Negro Sermon.)





    Once, in a night as black as ink,
    She drove him out when he would not drink.
    Round the house there were men in wait
    Asleep in rows by the Gaza gate.
    But the Holy Spirit was in this man.
    Like a gentle wind he crept and ran.
    (“It is midnight,” said the big town clock.)


    He lifted the gates up, post and lock.
    The hole in the wall was high and wide
    When he bore away old Gaza's pride
    Into the deep of the night: —
    The bold Jack Johnson Israelite, —
    Samson —
    The Judge,
    The Nazarite.


    The air was black, like the smoke of a dragon.
    Samson's heart was as big as a wagon.
    He sang like a shining golden fountain.
    He sweated up to the top of the mountain.
    He threw down the gates with a noise like judgment.
    And the quails all ran with the big arousement.


    But he wept —“I must not love tough queens,
    And spend on them my hard earned means.
    I told that girl I would drink no more.
    Therefore she drove me from her door.
    Oh sorrow!
    Sorrow!
    I cannot hide.
    Oh Lord look down from your chariot side.
    You made me Judge, and I am not wise.
    I am weak as a sheep for all my size.”


         Let Samson
         Be coming
         Into your mind.


    The moon shone out, the stars were gay.
    He saw the foxes run and play.
    He rent his garments, he rolled around
    In deep repentance on the ground.


    Then he felt a honey in his soul.
    Grace abounding made him whole.
    Then he saw the Lord in a chariot blue.
    The gorgeous stallions whinnied and flew.
    The iron wheels hummed an old hymn-tune
    And crunched in thunder over the moon.
    And Samson shouted to the sky:
    “My Lord, my Lord is riding high.”


    Like a steed, he pawed the gates with his hoof.
    He rattled the gates like rocks on the roof,
    And danced in the night
    On the mountain-top,
    Danced in the deep of the night:
    The Judge, the holy Nazarite,
    Whom ropes and chains could never bind.


         Let Samson
         Be coming
         Into your mind.


    Whirling his arms, like a top he sped.
    His long black hair flew round his head
    Like an outstretched net of silky cord,
    Like a wheel of the chariot of the Lord.


         Let Samson
         Be coming
         Into your mind.


    Samson saw the sun anew.
    He left the gates in the grass and dew.
    He went to a county-seat a-nigh.
    Found a harlot proud and high:
    Philistine that no man could tame —
    Delilah was her lady-name.
    Oh sorrow,
    Sorrow,
    She was too wise.
    She cut off his hair,
    She put out his eyes.


         Let Samson
         Be coming
         Into your mind.