Vachel Lindsay

“ 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! ”

“ Men's Leader: King Solomon he asked the Queen of Sheba,
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,

Bowing most politely:
"It blooms forever thinking of your wisdom,
Your brave heart and the way you rule your kingdom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mr. Lindsay doesn't need to write verse to be a poet. His prose is poetry—poetry straight from the soil, of America that is, and of a nobler America that is to be. You cannot afford—both for your entertainment and for the REAL IDEA that this young man has (of which we have said nothing) —to miss this book.—Editorial from 'Collier's Weekly'.
The Art of the Moving Picture
Price, $1.25
An effort to apply the Gospel of Beauty to a new art. ”

“ Life is a loom, weaving illusion... ”

“ Of motor cars, which gave him a lift, he says: "I still maintain that the auto is a carnal institution, to be shunned by the truly spiritual, but there are times when I, for one, get tired of being spiritual." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lindsay, taking as scrip for the journey, "Rhymes to be Traded for Bread", made a pilgrimage on foot through several Western States going as far afield as New Mexico. The story of this journey is given in his volume, "Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty". Mr. Lindsay first attracted attention in poetry by "General William Booth Enters into Heaven", a poem which became the title of his first volume, in 1913. His second volume was "The Congo", published in 1914. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ This book serves to introduce the next, "Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty". In the spring and summer of 1912, Mr. Lindsay walked from Springfield, Illinois, west to Colorado, and into New Mexico. He was much more experienced in the road. ”

“ Lotus"; "Michaelangelo"; "Titian"; "What the Hyena Said"; "What Grandpa
Mouse Said"; "A Net to Snare the Moonlight"; "Springfield Magical";
"The Proud Farmer"; "The Illinois Village"; "The Building of
Springfield".
————
Comments on the Title Poem:
"This poem, at once so glorious, so touching and poignant in its conception and expression ... is perhaps the most remarkable poem of a decade—one that defies imitation."—'Review of Reviews'.
"A sweeping and penetrating vision that works with a naive charm....
No American poet of to-day is more a people's poet."—'Boston
Transcript'. ”

“ Those who desire a close view of the Lindsay idea will do well to read the three works in the order named. Further particulars in the pages following.
The Congo and Other Poems
With a preface by Harriet Monroe, Editor of the 'Poetry Magazine'.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25; leather, $1.60
In the readings which Vachel Lindsay has given for colleges, universities, etc., throughout the country, he has won the approbation of the critics and of his audiences in general for the new verse-form which he is employing, as well as the manner of his chanting and singing, which is peculiarly his own. ”

“ 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. ”