The Congo and Other Poems, by Vachel Lindsay
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Lindsay >> The Congo and Other Poems, by Vachel Lindsay
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The Congo and Other Poems
By Vachel Lindsay [Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Illinois Artist. 1879-1931.]
[Note on text: Due to the distinctions made by the author
between emphasis by capitalization and emphasis by use of italics,
especially in those poems intended to be read aloud,
italicized words, phrases, and sections are marked by asterisks (*).
Lines longer than 78 characters are broken, and the continuation
is indented two spaces. Also, a great many obvious errors
have been corrected. These are mostly errors in punctuation,
often inconsistent with other parts of the text -- a few were typos.]
[More notes: The `stage-directions' given in "The Congo" and those poems
which are meant to be read aloud, are traditionally printed to the right side
of the first line it refers to. This is possible, but impracticable,
to imitate in a simple ASCII text. Therefore these `stage-directions'
are given on the line BEFORE the first line they refer to, and are furthermore
indented 20 spaces and enclosed by #s to keep it clear to the reader
which parts are text and which parts directions.]
[This electronic text was transcribed from a reprint of the original edition,
which was first published in New York, in September, 1914.
Due to a great deal of irregularity between titles in the table of contents
and in the text of the original, there are some slight differences
from the original in these matters -- with the more complete titles
replacing cropped ones. In one case they are different enough
that both are given, and "Twenty Poems in which. . . ." was originally
"Twenty Moon Poems" in the table of contents -- the odd thing
about both these titles is that there are actually twenty-TWO moon poems.]
The Congo and Other Poems
By Vachel Lindsay
With an introduction by
Harriet Monroe
Editor of "Poetry"
Introduction. By Harriet Monroe
When `Poetry, A Magazine of Verse', was first published in Chicago
in the autumn of 1912, an Illinois poet, Vachel Lindsay,
was, quite appropriately, one of its first discoveries.
It may be not quite without significance that the issue of January, 1913,
which led off with `General William Booth Enters into Heaven',
immediately followed the number in which the great poet of Bengal,
Rabindra Nath Tagore, was first presented to the American public,
and that these two antipodal poets soon appeared in person among the earliest
visitors to the editor. For the coming together of East and West
may prove to be the great event of the approaching era,
and if the poetry of the now famous Bengali laureate
garners the richest wisdom and highest spirituality of his ancient race,
so one may venture to believe that the young Illinois troubadour
brings from Lincoln's city an authentic strain of the lyric message
of this newer world.
It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to mention Mr. Lindsay's loyalty
to the people of his place and hour, or the training in sympathy
with their aims and ideals which he has achieved through
vagabondish wanderings in the Middle West. And we may permit time
to decide how far he expresses their emotion. But it may be opportune
to emphasize his plea for poetry as a song art, an art appealing to the ear
rather than the eye. The first section of this volume is especially an effort
to restore poetry to its proper place -- the audience-chamber,
and take it out of the library, the closet. In the library it has become,
so far as the people are concerned, almost a lost art,
and perhaps it can be restored to the people only through
a renewal of its appeal to the ear.
I am tempted to quote from Mr. Lindsay's explanatory note
which accompanied three of these poems when they were first printed
in `Poetry'. He said:
"Mr. Yeats asked me recently in Chicago, `What are we going to do
to restore the primitive singing of poetry?' I find what Mr. Yeats means by
`the primitive singing of poetry' in Professor Edward Bliss Reed's new volume
on `The English Lyric'. He says in his chapter on the definition
of the lyric: `With the Greeks "song" was an all-embracing term.
It included the crooning of the nurse to the child . . .
the half-sung chant of the mower or sailor . . . the formal ode
sung by the poet. In all Greek lyrics, even in the choral odes,
music was the handmaid of verse. . . . The poet himself
composed the accompaniment. Euripides was censured because
Iophon had assisted him in the musical setting of some of his dramas.'
Here is pictured a type of Greek work which survives in American vaudeville,
where every line may be two-thirds spoken and one-third sung,
the entire rendering, musical and elocutionary, depending upon
the improvising power and sure instinct of the performer.
"I respectfully submit these poems as experiments in which I endeavor
to carry this vaudeville form back towards the old Greek precedent
of the half-chanted lyric. In this case the one-third of music
must be added by the instinct of the reader. He must be Iophon.
And he can easily be Iophon if he brings to bear upon the piece
what might be called the Higher Vaudeville imagination. . . .
"Big general contrasts between the main sections should be the rule
of the first attempts at improvising. It is the hope of the writer
that after two or three readings each line will suggest
its own separate touch of melody to the reader who has become
accustomed to the cadences. Let him read what he likes read,
and sing what he likes sung."
It was during this same visit in Chicago, at `Poetry's' banquet
on the evening of March first, 1914, that Mr. Yeats honored Mr. Lindsay
by addressing his after-dinner talk primarily to him as "a fellow craftsman",
and by saying of `General Booth':
"This poem is stripped bare of ornament; it has an earnest simplicity,
a strange beauty, and you know Bacon said, `There is no excellent beauty
without strangeness.'"
This recognition from the distinguished Irish poet tempts me to hint
at the cosmopolitan aspects of such racily local art as Mr. Lindsay's.
The subject is too large for a merely introductory word,
but the reader may be invited to reflect upon it. If Mr. Lindsay's poetry
should cross the ocean, it would not be the first time
that our most indigenous art has reacted upon the art of older nations.
Besides Poe -- who, though indigenous in ways too subtle for brief analysis,
yet passed all frontiers in his swift, sad flight -- the two American artists
of widest influence, Whitman and Whistler, have been intensely American
in temperament and in the special spiritual quality of their art.
If Whistler was the first great artist to accept the modern message
in Oriental art, if Whitman was the first great modern poet
to discard the limitations of conventional form: if both were more free,
more individual, than their contemporaries, this was
the expression of their Americanism, which may perhaps be defined
as a spiritual independence and love of adventure inherited from the pioneers.
Foreign artists are usually the first to recognize this new tang;
one detects the influence of the great dead poet and dead painter
in all modern art which looks forward instead of back;
and their countrymen, our own contemporary poets and painters,
often express indirectly, through French influences,
a reaction which they are reluctant to confess directly.
A lighter phase of this foreign enthusiasm for the American tang
is confessed by Signor Marinetti, the Italian "futurist",
when in his article on `Futurism and the Theatre', in `The Mask',
he urges the revolutionary value of "American eccentrics",
citing the fundamental primitive quality in their vaudeville art.
This may be another statement of Mr. Lindsay's plea for a closer relation
between the poet and his audience, for a return to the healthier
open-air conditions, and immediate personal contacts, in the art of the Greeks
and of primitive nations. Such conditions and contacts may still be found,
if the world only knew it, in the wonderful song-dances of the Hopis
and others of our aboriginal tribes. They may be found, also, in a measure,
in the quick response between artist and audience in modern vaudeville.
They are destined to a wider and higher influence; in fact,
the development of that influence, the return to primitive sympathies
between artist and audience, which may make possible once more
the assertion of primitive creative power, is recognized as
the immediate movement in modern art. It is a movement strong enough
to persist in spite of extravagances and absurdities; strong enough,
it may be hoped, to fulfil its purpose and revitalize the world.
It is because Mr. Lindsay's poetry seems to be definitely in that movement
that it is, I think, important.
Harriet Monroe.
Table of Contents
Introduction. By Harriet Monroe
First Section
Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted.
The Congo
The Santa Fe Trail
The Firemen's Ball
The Master of the Dance
The Mysterious Cat
A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten
Yankee Doodle
The Black Hawk War of the Artists
The Jingo and the Minstrel
I Heard Immanuel Singing
Second Section
Incense
An Argument
A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign
In Memory of a Child
Galahad, Knight Who Perished
The Leaden-eyed
An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie
The Hearth Eternal
The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit
By the Spring, at Sunset
I Went down into the Desert
Love and Law
The Perfect Marriage
Darling Daughter of Babylon
The Amaranth
The Alchemist's Petition
Two Easter Stanzas
The Traveller-heart
The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son
Third Section
A Miscellany called "the Christmas Tree"
This Section is a Christmas Tree
The Sun Says his Prayers
Popcorn, Glass Balls, and Cranberries (As it were)
I. The Lion
II. An Explanation of the Grasshopper
III. The Dangerous Little Boy Fairies
IV. The Mouse that gnawed the Oak-tree Down
V. Parvenu
VI. The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly
VII. Crickets on a Strike
How a Little Girl Danced
In Praise of Songs that Die
Factory Windows are always Broken
To Mary Pickford
Blanche Sweet
Sunshine
An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic
When Gassy Thompson Struck it Rich
Rhymes for Gloriana
I. The Doll upon the Topmost Bough
II. On Suddenly Receiving a Curl Long Refused
III. On Receiving One of Gloriana's Letters
IV. In Praise of Gloriana's Remarkable Golden Hair
Fourth Section
Twenty Poems in which the Moon is the Principal Figure of Speech
Once More -- To Gloriana
First Section: Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children
I. Euclid
II. The Haughty Snail-king
III. What the Rattlesnake Said
IV. The Moon's the North Wind's Cooky
V. Drying their Wings
VI. What the Gray-winged Fairy Said
VII. Yet Gentle will the Griffin Be
Second Section: The Moon is a Mirror
I. Prologue. A Sense of Humor
II. On the Garden-wall
III. Written for a Musician
IV. The Moon is a Painter
V. The Encyclopaedia
VI. What the Miner in the Desert Said
VII. What the Coal-heaver Said
VIII. What the Moon Saw
IX. What Semiramis Said
X. What the Ghost of the Gambler Said
XI. The Spice-tree
XII. The Scissors-grinder
XIII. My Lady in her White Silk Shawl
XIV. Aladdin and the Jinn
XV. The Strength of the Lonely
Fifth Section
War. September 1, 1914
Intended to be Read Aloud
I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
II. A Curse for Kings
III. Who Knows?
IV. To Buddha
V. The Unpardonable Sin
VI. Above the Battle's Front
VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your Psyche Wings
First Section
Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted.
The Congo
A Study of the Negro Race
I. Their Basic Savagery
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
# A deep rolling bass. #
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.
I could not turn from their revel in derision.
# More deliberate. Solemnly chanted. #
THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
Then along that riverbank
A thousand miles
Tattooed cannibals danced in files;
Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song
# A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket. #
And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.
And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,
"BLOOD" screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors,
"Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,
Harry the uplands,
Steal all the cattle,
Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,
Bing.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,"
# With a philosophic pause. #
A roaring, epic, rag-time tune
From the mouth of the Congo
To the Mountains of the Moon.
Death is an Elephant,
# Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre. #
Torch-eyed and horrible,
Foam-flanked and terrible.
BOOM, steal the pygmies,
BOOM, kill the Arabs,
BOOM, kill the white men,
HOO, HOO, HOO.
# Like the wind in the chimney. #
Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
Listen to the creepy proclamation,
Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation,
Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay,
Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play: --
"Be careful what you do,
# All the o sounds very golden. Heavy accents very heavy.
Light accents very light. Last line whispered. #
Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,
And all of the other
Gods of the Congo,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."
II. Their Irrepressible High Spirits
# Rather shrill and high. #
Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call
Danced the juba in their gambling-hall
And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town,
And guyed the policemen and laughed them down
With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
# Read exactly as in first section. #
THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
# Lay emphasis on the delicate ideas.
Keep as light-footed as possible. #
A negro fairyland swung into view,
A minstrel river
Where dreams come true.
The ebony palace soared on high
Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky.
The inlaid porches and casements shone
With gold and ivory and elephant-bone.
And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore
At the baboon butler in the agate door,
And the well-known tunes of the parrot band
That trilled on the bushes of that magic land.
# With pomposity. #
A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came
Through the agate doorway in suits of flame,
Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust
And hats that were covered with diamond-dust.
And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call
And danced the juba from wall to wall.
# With a great deliberation and ghostliness. #
But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng
With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song: --
"Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you." . . .
# With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp. #
Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes,
Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats,
Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine,
And tall silk hats that were red as wine.
# With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm. #
And they pranced with their butterfly partners there,
Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair,
Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet,
And bells on their ankles and little black feet.
And the couples railed at the chant and the frown
Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down.
(O rare was the revel, and well worth while
That made those glowering witch-men smile.)
The cake-walk royalty then began
To walk for a cake that was tall as a man
To the tune of "Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,"
# With a touch of negro dialect,
and as rapidly as possible toward the end. #
While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air,
And sang with the scalawags prancing there: --
"Walk with care, walk with care,
Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,
And all of the other
Gods of the Congo,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Beware, beware, walk with care,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay,
BOOM."
# Slow philosophic calm. #
Oh rare was the revel, and well worth while
That made those glowering witch-men smile.
III. The Hope of their Religion
# Heavy bass. With a literal imitation
of camp-meeting racket, and trance. #
A good old negro in the slums of the town
Preached at a sister for her velvet gown.
Howled at a brother for his low-down ways,
His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days.
Beat on the Bible till he wore it out
Starting the jubilee revival shout.
And some had visions, as they stood on chairs,
And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs,
And they all repented, a thousand strong
From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong
And slammed with their hymn books till they shook the room
With "glory, glory, glory,"
And "Boom, boom, BOOM."
# Exactly as in the first section.
Begin with terror and power, end with joy. #
THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK
CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil
And showed the apostles with their coats of mail.
In bright white steele they were seated round
And their fire-eyes watched where the Congo wound.
And the twelve Apostles, from their thrones on high
Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly cry: --
# Sung to the tune of "Hark, ten thousand
harps and voices". #
"Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle;
Never again will he hoo-doo you,
Never again will he hoo-doo you."
# With growing deliberation and joy. #
Then along that river, a thousand miles
The vine-snared trees fell down in files.
Pioneer angels cleared the way
For a Congo paradise, for babes at play,
For sacred capitals, for temples clean.
Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean.
# In a rather high key -- as delicately as possible. #
There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed
A million boats of the angels sailed
With oars of silver, and prows of blue
And silken pennants that the sun shone through.
'Twas a land transfigured, 'twas a new creation.
Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation
And on through the backwoods clearing flew: --
# To the tune of "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices". #
"Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle.
Never again will he hoo-doo you.
Never again will he hoo-doo you."
Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men,
And only the vulture dared again
By the far, lone mountains of the moon
To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune: --
# Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper. #
"Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Mumbo . . . Jumbo . . . will . . . hoo-doo . . . you."
This poem, particularly the third section, was suggested by an allusion
in a sermon by my pastor, F. W. Burnham, to the heroic life and death
of Ray Eldred. Eldred was a missionary of the Disciples of Christ
who perished while swimming a treacherous branch of the Congo.
See "A Master Builder on the Congo", by Andrew F. Hensey,
published by Fleming H. Revell.
The Santa Fe Trail
(A Humoresque)
I asked the old Negro, "What is that bird that sings so well?"
He answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name,
lark, or thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane."
I. In which a Racing Auto comes from the East
# To be sung delicately, to an improvised tune. #
This is the order of the music of the morning: --
First, from the far East comes but a crooning.
The crooning turns to a sunrise singing.
Hark to the *calm*-horn, *balm*-horn, *psalm*-horn.
Hark to the *faint*-horn, *quaint*-horn, *saint*-horn. . . .
# To be sung or read with great speed. #
Hark to the *pace*-horn, *chase*-horn, *race*-horn.
And the holy veil of the dawn has gone.
Swiftly the brazen car comes on.
It burns in the East as the sunrise burns.
I see great flashes where the far trail turns.
Its eyes are lamps like the eyes of dragons.
It drinks gasoline from big red flagons.
Butting through the delicate mists of the morning,
It comes like lightning, goes past roaring.
It will hail all the wind-mills, taunting, ringing,
Dodge the cyclones,
Count the milestones,
On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills --
Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hills. . . .
# To be read or sung in a rolling bass,
with some deliberation. #
Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn,
Ho for the *gay*-horn, *bark*-horn, *bay*-horn.
*Ho for Kansas, land that restores us
When houses choke us, and great books bore us!
Sunrise Kansas, harvester's Kansas,
A million men have found you before us.*
II. In which Many Autos pass Westward
# In an even, deliberate, narrative manner. #
I want live things in their pride to remain.
I will not kill one grasshopper vain
Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door.
I let him out, give him one chance more.
Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim,
Grasshopper lyrics occur to him.
I am a tramp by the long trail's border,
Given to squalor, rags and disorder.
I nap and amble and yawn and look,
Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book,
Recite to the children, explore at my ease,
Work when I work, beg when I please,
Give crank-drawings, that make folks stare
To the half-grown boys in the sunset glare,
And get me a place to sleep in the hay
At the end of a live-and-let-live day.
I find in the stubble of the new-cut weeds
A whisper and a feasting, all one needs:
The whisper of the strawberries, white and red
Here where the new-cut weeds lie dead.
But I would not walk all alone till I die
Without some life-drunk horns going by.
Up round this apple-earth they come
Blasting the whispers of the morning dumb: --
Cars in a plain realistic row.
And fair dreams fade
When the raw horns blow.
On each snapping pennant
A big black name: --
The careering city
Whence each car came.
# Like a train-caller in a Union Depot. #
They tour from Memphis, Atlanta, Savannah,
Tallahassee and Texarkana.
They tour from St. Louis, Columbus, Manistee,
They tour from Peoria, Davenport, Kankakee.
Cars from Concord, Niagara, Boston,
Cars from Topeka, Emporia, and Austin.
Cars from Chicago, Hannibal, Cairo.
Cars from Alton, Oswego, Toledo.
Cars from Buffalo, Kokomo, Delphi,
Cars from Lodi, Carmi, Loami.
Ho for Kansas, land that restores us
When houses choke us, and great books bore us!
While I watch the highroad
And look at the sky,
While I watch the clouds in amazing grandeur
Roll their legions without rain
Over the blistering Kansas plain --
While I sit by the milestone
And watch the sky,
The United States
Goes by.
# To be given very harshly,
with a snapping explosiveness. #
Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking.
Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking.
Way down the road, trilling like a toad,
Here comes the *dice*-horn, here comes the *vice*-horn,
Here comes the *snarl*-horn, *brawl*-horn, *lewd*-horn,
Followed by the *prude*-horn, bleak and squeaking: --
(Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.)
Here comes the *hod*-horn, *plod*-horn, *sod*-horn,
Nevermore-to-*roam*-horn, *loam*-horn, *home*-horn.
(Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.)
# To be read or sung, well-nigh in a whisper. #
Far away the Rachel-Jane
Not defeated by the horns
Sings amid a hedge of thorns: --
"Love and life,
Eternal youth --
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,
Dew and glory,
Love and truth,
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet."
# Louder and louder, faster and faster. #
WHILE SMOKE-BLACK FREIGHTS ON THE DOUBLE-TRACKED RAILROAD,
DRIVEN AS THOUGH BY THE FOUL-FIEND'S OX-GOAD,
SCREAMING TO THE WEST COAST, SCREAMING TO THE EAST,
CARRY OFF A HARVEST, BRING BACK A FEAST,
HARVESTING MACHINERY AND HARNESS FOR THE BEAST.
THE HAND-CARS WHIZ, AND RATTLE ON THE RAILS,
THE SUNLIGHT FLASHES ON THE TIN DINNER-PAILS.
# In a rolling bass, with increasing deliberation. #
And then, in an instant,
Ye modern men,
Behold the procession once again,
# With a snapping explosiveness. #
Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking,
Listen to the *wise*-horn, desperate-to-*advise*-horn,
Listen to the *fast*-horn, *kill*-horn, *blast*-horn. . . .
# To be sung or read well-nigh in a whisper. #
Far away the Rachel-Jane
Not defeated by the horns
Sings amid a hedge of thorns: --
Love and life,
Eternal youth,
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,
Dew and glory,
Love and truth.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.
# To be brawled in the beginning with a
snapping explosiveness, ending in a languorous chant. #
The mufflers open on a score of cars
With wonderful thunder,
CRACK, CRACK, CRACK,
CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK,
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK, . . .
Listen to the gold-horn . . .
Old-horn . . .
Cold-horn . . .
And all of the tunes, till the night comes down
On hay-stack, and ant-hill, and wind-bitten town.
# To be sung to exactly the same whispered tune
as the first five lines. #
Then far in the west, as in the beginning,
Dim in the distance, sweet in retreating,
Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn,
Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn. . . .