VACHEL LINDSAY, POET OF TOWN; AND CITY TOO
[Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used
by permission, and are taken from the following works: The Congo, and
General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, Published by the Macmillan
Company, New York.]

A STUDY OF CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES IN VILLAGE AND CITY; ON TEMPERANCE, MISSIONS, AND RACES

Vachel Lindsay is not only a poet but he is also a preacher. I do not know whether he is ordained or not, but in a leaflet that he recently sent me, he says, "Mr. Lindsay offers the following sermons to be preached on short notice and without a collection, in any chapel that will open its doors as he passes by: 'The Gospel of the Hearth,' 'The Gospel of Voluntary Poverty,' 'The Holiness of Beauty.'"

His truly great book, "The Congo," that poem which so sympathetically catches the spirit of the uplift of the Negro race through Christianity, that weird, musical, chanting, swinging, singing, sweeping, weeping, rhythmic, flowing, swaying, clanging, banging, leaping, laughing, groaning, moaning book of the elementals, was inspired suddenly, one Sabbath evening, as the poet sat in church listening to a returned missionary speaking on "The Congo." Nor a Poe nor a Lanier ever wrote more weirdly or more musically.

[Illustration: VACHEL LINDSAY]

The poet himself, Christian to the bone, suggests that his poetry must be chanted to get the full sweep and beauty. This I have done, alone by my wood fire of a long California evening, and have found it strangely, beautifully, wonderfully full of memories of church. I think that it is the echo of old hymns that I catch in his poetry. Biblical they are, in their simplicity, Christian until they drip with love.

CHRIST AND THE CITY SOUL

I think that no Christian poet has so caught the soul of the real city.
One phrase that links Christ with the city is the old-fashioned yet
ever thrilling phrase, "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the
Holy Spirit."

An electrical sign suggests prayer to him. It is a unique thought in "A Rhyme About An Electrical Advertising Sign," the lines of which startle one almost with their newness:

"Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies,
As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise.
And we shall be lifted rejoicing by night,
Till we join with the planets who choir their delight.
The signs in the street and the signs in the skies
Shall make a new Zodiac guiding the wise,
And Broadway make one, with that marvelous stair
That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer."

The Congo.

He looks straight up above the signs to heaven. But he does not forget to look down also, where the people are, the folks that walk and live and crawl under the electric signs. In "Galahad, Knight Who Perished" (a poem dedicated to all crusaders against the international and interstate traffic in young girls), this phrase rings and rings its way into Christian consciousness:

"Galahad—knight who perished—awaken again,
Teach us to fight for immaculate ways among men."

The Congo.

And again and again one is rudely awakened from his ease by such lines as "The leaden-eyed" children of the city which he pictures:

"Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly;
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap;
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve;
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep."

The Congo.

Who has not seen factory windows in village, town, and city, and who has not known that "Factory windows are always broken"? How this smacks of pall, and smoke, and dirt, and grind, and hurt and little weak children, slaves of industry! Thank God, Vachel Lindsay, that the Christian Church has found an ally in you; and poet and preacher together—for they are both akin—pray God we may soon abolish forever child slavery. Yes, no wonder "Factory windows are always broken." The children break them because they hate a prison.

The "Coal Heaver," "The Scissors Grinder," "The Mendicant," "The
Tramp," all so smacking of the city, have their interpretation.

I wish in these pages might be quoted all of "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit," for it daringly, beautifully, and strongly carries into the new philosophy which Mr. Lindsay is introducing the thought that every village, every town, every city has a community soul that must be saved, through Christian influence. But the ring of it and the swing of it will suggest itself in a few verses:

"Censers are swinging
Over the town;
Censers are swinging,
Look overhead!
Censers are swinging,
Heaven comes down.
City, dead city,
Awake from the dead!

* * * * *

"Soldiers of Christ
For battle grow keen.
Heaven-sent winds
Haunt alley and lane.
Singing of life
In town-meadows green
After the toil
And battle and pain.

* * * * *

"Builders, toil on,
Make all complete.
Make Springfield wonderful.
Make her renown
Worthy this day,
Till at God's feet,
Tranced, saved forever,
Waits the white town."

The Congo.

Ah, if we could but catch this vision of not only the individuals but the city itself receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, we would have therein a new and a tremendous force for good.

One might quote from "The Drunkards in the Street":

"Within their gutters, drunkards dream of Hell.
I say my prayers by my white bed to-night,
With the arms of God about me, with the angels singing, singing
Until the grayness of my soul grows white."

General William Booth.

He goes to the bottom of the social evil, down to its economic causes, and blames the state for "The Trap," and this striking couplet rings in one's heart long after the book is laid down:

"In liberty's name we cry
For these women about to die!"

General William Booth.

The poet who speaks in "The City That Will Not Repent" is only feeling over again, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,… how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" The "Old Horse in the City," "To Reformers in Despair," "The Gamblers"—it is all there: the heartaches, the struggle for existence, the fallen woman, the outcast man, the sound of drums, the tambourines, the singing of the mission halls. You find it all, especially in "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven." Here is life—the very life of life in the city.

FOREIGN MISSIONS

They who have found opposition to foreign missions will discover with a thrill a new helper in Poet Lindsay, he who has won the ear of the literary world. It is good to hear one of his worth, singing the battle challenge of missions, just as it is good to hear him call the modern village, town, and city to "The Gift of the Holy Spirit." "Foreign Fields in Battle Array" brings this thrillingly prophetic, Isaiahanic verse:

"What is the final ending?
The issue can we know?
Will Christ outlive Mohammed?
Will Kali's altar go?
This is our faith tremendous—-
Our wild hope, who shall scorn—
That in the name of Jesus,
The world shall be reborn!"

General William Booth.

"Reborn"—does not that phrase sound familiar to Methodist ears, as does that other phrase, "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit"? Or, again, hear two lines from "Star of My Heart":

"All hearts of the earth shall find new birth
And wake no more to sin."

General William Booth.

TEMPERANCE

In these days, when the world is being swept clean with the besom of temperance, the poet who sings the song of temperance is the "poet that sings to battle." Lindsay has done this in some lines in his "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven," which he admits having written while a field worker in the Anti-Saloon League in Illinois. At the end of each verse we have one of these three couplets:

"But spears are set, the charge is on,
Wise Arthur shall be King!"

"Fierce Cromwell builds the flower-bright towns
And a more sunlit land;"

and,

"Our God establishes his arm
And makes the battle sure!"

General William Booth.

He puts the temperance worker in the "Round Table" under the heading, "King Arthur's Men Have Come Again." He lifts the battle to a high realm. "To go about redressing human wrongs," as King Arthur's Knights were sworn to do, would certainly be a most appropriate motto for the modern Christian temperance worker, and Lindsay is the only poet acknowledged by the literary world who has sung this Galahad's praise with keen insight.

But his greatest poem, "The Congo," that poem which has captured the imagination of the literary world and which is so little known to the Christian world—where it ought to be known best of all—will give a glimpse of the new Christian influence on the races. The poet suggests that it be chanted to the tune of the old hymn, "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices."

It is a strange poem. It is so new that it is startling, but it has won. Listen to its strange swing, and see its stranger pictures. Through the thin veneer of a new civilization, back of the Christianized Negro race, the poet sees, under the inspiration of a missionary sermon delivered in a modern church, the race that was:

"Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings with feet unstable,
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.
THEN I SAW THE CONGO CREEPING
THROUGH THE BLACK,
CUTTING THROUGH THE FORESTS WITH
A GOLDEN TRACK!"

The Congo.

Then follows as vital, vivid, and vigorous a description as ever was written by pen, inspired of God, tipped with fire, of the uplift and redemption of the Negro race, through Jesus Christ.

The "General William Booth" title poem to the second Lindsay book shook the literary world awake with its perfect interpretation of The Salvation Army leader. It is a poem to be chanted at first with "Bass drums beaten loudly" and then "with banjos"; then softly with "sweet flute music," and finally, as the great General comes face to face with Christ, with a "Grand chorus of all instruments; tambourines to the foreground." Running through this poem is the refrain of "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" and the last lines catch the tender, yet absolutely unique spirit of the entire poem:

"And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer
He saw his Master thro' the flag-filled air.
Christ came gently with a robe and crown
For Booth the soldier, while the throng knealt down.
He saw King Jesus. They were face to face,
And he knealt a-weeping in that holy place,
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?"

General William Booth.

But one could not get Lindsay to the hearts of folks, one could not make the picture complete, without putting Lincoln in, any more than he could make Lindsay complete without putting into these pages "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit," or "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven," or "The Congo." Lincoln seems to be as much a part of Lindsay as he is a part of Springfield. Lindsay and Lincoln, to those who love both, mean Springfield, and Springfield means Lincoln and Lindsay. And what Lindsay is trying to do for city, for village, for town, for the Negro, for every human being, is voiced in his poem, "Lincoln."

"Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,
That which is gendered in the wilderness,
From lonely prairies and God's tenderness."

General William Booth.

Let this poem "Heart of God" be the benediction of this chapter on
Lindsay:

"O great heart of God,
Once vague and lost to me,
Why do I throb with your throb to-night,
In this land, eternity?

"O, little heart of God,
Sweet intruding stranger,
You are laughing in my human breast,
A Christ-child in a manger.

"Heart, dear heart of God,
Beside you now I kneel,
Strong heart of faith. O heart not mine,
Where God has set His seal.

"Wild, thundering heart of God,
Out of my doubt I come,
And my foolish feet with prophets' feet
March with the prophets' drum!"

General William Booth.

[Illustration: JOAQUIN MILLER]