Vachel Lindsay

“ It is possible for Los Angeles to lay hold of the motion picture as our national text book in art, as Boston appropriated to herself the guardianship of the national text book of literature. If California has a shining soul, and not merely a golden body, let her forget her seventeen year old melodramatics, and turn to her poets who understand the heart underneath the glory. ”

“ How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning. How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations.
“For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God....
“All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house. ”

“ Of this fact we have full assurance since He that now sits upon the throne of the Universe has pledged His word for it, saying: ‘Behold I will create all things new,’ consequently, ‘new heavens, new earth,’ consequently, new tenantries, new employments, new pleasures, new joys, new ecstasies. There is a fullness of joy, a fullness of glory and a fullness of blessedness of which no living man, however enlightened, however enlarged, however gifted, ever formed or entertained one adequate conception. ”

“ John Littlehouse the redhead was a large ruddy man
Quite proud to be a blacksmith, and he loved Polly Ann, Polly Ann.
Straightway to her window with his iron guitar he came
Breathing like a blacksmith—his wonderful heart’s flame.
Though not very bashful and not very bold
He had reached the plain conclusion his passion must be told.
And so he sang: “Awake, awake,”—this hip-hoo-rayious man.
“Do you like me, do you love me, Polly Ann, Polly Ann?
The rooster on my coalshed crows at break of day.
It makes a person happy to hear his roundelay. ”

“ The moving picture captains of industry, like the California gold finders of 1849, making colossal fortunes in two or three years, have the same glorious irresponsibility and occasional need of the sheriff. They are Californians more literally than this. Around Los Angeles the greatest and most characteristic moving picture colonies are built. Each photoplay magazine has its California letter, telling of the putting up of new studios, and the transfer of actors with much slap-you-on-the-back personal gossip. ”

“ From here on, the audience joins in the refrain:—“gold, gold, gold.”
“Oh the flashing cornucopia of haughty California
Is gold, gold, gold.
Their brittle speech and their clutching reach
Is gold, gold, gold. ”

“ Some of us view with a peculiar thrill the prospect that Los Angeles may become the Boston of the photoplay. Perhaps it would be better to say the Florence, because California reminds one of colorful Italy, more than of any part of the United States. ”

“ It is for us to put the iron dog and deer back upon the lawn, the John Rogers group back into the parlor, and get new inspiration from these and from Andrew Jackson ramping in bronze replica in New Orleans, Nashville and Washington, and add to them a sense of humor, till it becomes a sense of beauty that will resist the merely dulcet and affettuoso. ”

“ This apparent thinness California has in common with the routine photoplay, which is at times as shallow in its thought as the shadow it throws upon [Pg xvi] the screen. This newness California has in common with all photoplays. It is thrillingly possible for the state and the art to acquire spiritual tradition and depth together.
“Part of the thinness of California is not only its youth, but the result of the physical fact that the human race is there spread over so many acres of land. “Good” Californians count their mines and enumerate their palm trees. ”

“ They shout the statistics across the Rockies and the deserts to New York. The Mississippi valley is non-existent to the Californian. His fellow-feeling is for the opposite coast line. Through the geographical accident of separation by mountain and desert from the rest of the country, he becomes a mere shouter, hurrahing so assiduously that all variety in the voice is lost. ”

“ Believe me, dear, a blacksmith man can feel.
I will bind you, if I can to my ribs with hoops of steel.
Do you hear me, Polly Ann, Polly Ann?”
And then his tune was silence, for he was not a fool.
He let his voice rest, his iron guitar cool. [Pg 86]
And thus he let the wind sing, the stars sing and the grass sing,
The prankishness of love sing, the girl’s tingling feet sing,
Her trembling sweet hands sing, her mirror in the dark sing,
Her grace in the dark sing, her pillow in the dark sing,
The savage in her blood sing, her starved little heart sing,
Silently sing. ”

“ If the photoplay is the consistent utterance of its scenes, if the actors are incarnations of the land they [Pg xiv] walk upon, as they should be, California indeed stands a chance to achieve through the films an utterance of her own. Will this land, furthest west, be the first to capture the inner spirit of this newest and most curious of the arts?...
“People who revere the Pilgrim Fathers of 1620 have often wished those gentlemen had moored their bark in the region of Los Angeles, rather than Plymouth Rock, that Boston had been founded there. ”

“ Like a man,
With his jazz dancing wonder,
With his pansy blossom wonder,
With his apple blossom wonder,
With his rag time lady,
Grand finale of jazz music, like the fall of a pile of dishes in the kitchen. [Pg 91]
The
Rag
Time
Man.
THE DANIEL JAZZ
Let the leader train the audience to roar like lions, and to join in the refrain “Go chain the lions down,” before he begins to lead them in this jazz. ”

“ The present day man-in-the-street, man-about-town Californian has an obvious magnificence about him that is allied to the eucalyptus tree, the pomegranate....
“The enemy of California says the state is magnificent, but thin. He declares it is as though it were painted on a Brobdingnagian piece of gilt paper, and he who dampens his finger and thrusts it through finds an alkali valley on the other side, the lonely prickly pear, and a heap of ashes from a deserted camp-fire. He says the citizens of this state lack the richness of an æsthetic and religious tradition. ”

“ But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcass trodden under feet. ”

“ In the following narrative, Lucifer is not Satan, King of Evil, who in the beginning led the rebels from Heaven, establishing the underworld.
Lucifer is here taken as a character appearing much later, the first singing creature weary of established ways in music, moved with the lust of wandering. He finds the open road between the stars too lonely. He wanders to the kingdom of Satan, there to sing a song that so moves demons and angels that he is, at its climax, momentary emperor of Hell and Heaven, and the flame kindled of the tears of the demons devastates the golden streets. ”

“ The California photoplaywright can base his Crowd Picture upon the city-worshipping mobs of San Francisco. He can derive his Patriotic and Religious Splendors from something older and more magnificent than the aisles of the Romanesque, namely: the groves of the giant redwoods.
[Pg xviii]
“The campaigns for a beautiful nation could very well emanate from the west coast, where, with the slightest care, grow up models for all the world of plant arrangement and tree-luxury. ”

“ Demons and angels curse the singer.
So we cursed the harping of Lucifer
The lyre was lost from his leper hands [Pg 68]
And the hell-hounds tore his living heart.
And the angels cursed great Lucifer
For his purple flame consumed their lands
Till golden ways were desert sands;
They hurled him down, afar, apart.
The Punishment.
Beneath where the Gulfs of Silence end,
Where never sighs nor songs descend,
Never a hell-flare in his eyes
Alone, alone, afar he lies....
Fearfully alone, beyond immortal ken
He is further down in the deep of pain
Than is Hell from the grief of men ”

“ Till New America, ancient Mizraim,
Cry: “Allah is the God of Abraham.”
God make our host relentless as the sun,
Each soul your spear, your banner and your slave,
God help us to be brave.
[Pg 139]
Napoleon
Would that the cold adventurous Corsican
Woke with new hope of glory, strong from sleep,
Instructed how to conquer and to keep
More justly, having dreamed awhile, yea crowned
With shining flowers, God-given; while the sound
Of singing continents, following the sun,
Calls freeborn men to guard Napoleon’s throne
Who makes the eternal hopes of man his own.
[Pg 140]
THE MODEST JAZZ-BIRD ”

“ He sees big white men with dogs and guns.
He falls down flat. He turns to stare—
No cats, no dogs, and no men there.
But black shadows, grey shadows, green shadows come.
The wind says, “Miau!” and the rain says, “Hum!”
He goes straight home. He dreams all night. ”

“ Every type of the photoplay but the intimate is founded on some phase of the out-of doors. Being thus dependent, the plant can best be set up where there is no winter. Besides this, the Los Angeles region has the sea, the mountains, the desert, and many kinds of grove and field.... ”

“ Ironic feelings in this matter, on the part of western men, are based somewhat on envy and illegitimate cussedness, but are also grounded in the honest hope of a healthful rivalry. They want new romanticists and artists as indigenous to their soil as was Hawthorne to witch-haunted Salem, or Longfellow to the chestnuts of his native heath. Whatever may be said of the patriarchs, from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Amos Bronson Alcott, they were true sons [Pg xv] of the New England stone fences and meeting houses. They could not have been born or nurtured anywhere else on the face of the earth. ”

“ As an institution it advertises itself with a sweeping gesture. It has the same passion for coast-line. These are not [Pg xvii] the sins of New England. When, in the hands of masters, they become sources of strength, they will be a different set of virtues from those of New England....
“When the Californian relegates the dramatic to secondary scenes, both in his life and his photoplay, and turns to the genuinely epic and lyric, he and this instrument may find their immortality together as New England found its soul in the essays of Emerson. ”

“ Where is that boy, that Heaven-born Bryan,
That Homer Bryan, who sang from the West?
Gone to join the shadows with Altgeld the Eagle,
Where the kings and the slaves and the troubadours rest.
Written at the Guanella Ranch, Empire, Colorado, August, 1919.
[Pg 31]
RAMESES II
Would that the brave Rameses, King of Time
Were throned in your souls, to raise for you
Vast immemorial dreams dark Egypt knew,
Filling these barren days with Mystery,
With Life and Death, and Immortality,
The Devouring Ages, the all-consuming Sun:
God keep us brooding on eternal things,
God make us wizard-kings. ”

“ Patriotic art students have discussed with mingled irony and admiration the Boston domination of the only American culture of the nineteenth century, namely, literature. Indianapolis has had her day since then. Chicago is lifting her head. Nevertheless Boston still controls the text book in English, and dominates our high schools. ”

“ One item that should perhaps chasten the native son, is that these motion picture people, so truly the hope of California, are not native sons or daughters.
When I was in Los Angeles, visiting my cousin Ruby Vachel Lindsay, we discussed many of these items at great length, as we walked about the Los Angeles region together. I owe much of my conception of the more idealistic moods of the state to those conversations. Others who have shown me what might be called the Franciscan soul, of the Franciscan minority, are Professor and Mrs. E. Olan James, my host and hostess at Mills College. ”

“ Confucius appeared, according to Mencius, one of his most distinguished followers, at a crisis in the nation’s history. ‘The world,’ he says, ‘had fallen into decay, and right principles had disappeared. Perverse discourses and oppressive deeds were waxen rife. Ministers murdered their rulers, and sons their fathers. Confucius was frightened by what he saw,—and he undertook the work of reformation.’
“He was a native of the state of Lu, a part of the modern Shantung.... ”

“ He built a colossal horse, adroitly balanced on the hind legs, and America gazed with bated breath. Nobody knows or cares whether the rider looks like Jackson or not.
“The extraordinary pose of the horse absorbs all attention, all admiration. There may be some subconscious feeling of respect for a rider who holds on so well....”
[Pg 144]
THE STATUE OF OLD ANDREW JACKSON Written while America was in the midst of the war with Germany, August, 1918
Andrew Jackson was eight feet tall. ”

“ TO
ISADORA BENNETT,
CITIZEN OF SPRINGFIELD,
because she helped me to write many of
the pieces, from the Golden Whales
of California to Alexander Campbell,
and because she danced
the Daniel Jazz.
For permission to reprint some of the verses in this volume the author is indebted to the courtesy of the editors and publishers of The Chicago Daily News, Poetry (Chicago) , Contemporary Verse, The New Republic, The Forum, Books and the Book World of the New York Sun, Others, The Red Cross Magazine, Youth, The Independent, and William Stanley Braithwaite’s anthology entitled “Victory.” ”

“ Indeed you make him welcome, after many years,
While the children build cob-houses on the floor.
Let a thousand prophets have their due.
Let each have his boat in the sky.
But you were born for his secular millennium
With the old Kentucky forest blooming like Heaven,
And the red birds flying high. THE END
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged. ”