Vachel Lindsay

I think that my first poetic impulse is for music; second a definite conception with the ring of the universe; third clearness of exposition.

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (November 10, 1879 – December 5, 1931) was an American poet. He is considered a founder of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted.

Quotes

• I will not be a slave to my yesterday. I am creator, not a parrot.
  • Letter quoted in Eleonor Ruggles, The West Going Heart (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1959) ch. 71, p. 412

General William Booth Enters into Heaven, and Other Poems (1913)

New York: Mitchell Kennerley

• Booth led boldly with his big bass drum—
  (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
  The Saints smiled gravely and they said:
          "He's come."
  • "General William Booth Enters into Heaven", pt. 1

• Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale—
  Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail:—
  Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
  Unwashed legions with the ways of Death—
  (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
  • "General William Booth Enters into Heaven", pt. 1

• Booth died blind and still by faith he trod,
  Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God.
  • "General William Booth Enters into Heaven", pt. 2

• Let not our town be large, remembering
  That little Athens was the Muses' home,
  That Oxford rules the heart of London still,
  That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome.
  • "On the Building of Springfield", st. 1

Except the Christ be born again tonight
In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame,
The world will never see his kingdom bright.

• Star of my heart, I follow from afar.
  Sweet Love on high, lead on where shepherds are,
  Where Time is not, and only dreamers are.
  Star from of old, the Magi-Kings are dead
  And a foolish Saxon seeks the manger-bed.
  O lead me to Jehovah's child
  Across this dreamland lone and wild,
  Then will I speak this prayer unsaid,
  And kiss his little haloed head—
  "My star and I, we love thee, little child."
  • "Star of My Heart", st. 1

• Except the Christ be born again tonight
  In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame,
  The world will never see his kingdom bright.
  Stars of all hearts, lead onward thro' the night
  Past death-black deserts, doubts without a name,
  Past hills of pain and mountains of new sin
  To that far sky where mystic births begin,
  Where dreaming ears the angel-song shall win.
  • "Star of My Heart", st. 2

• Our Christmas shall be rare at dawning there,
  And each shall find his brother fair,
  Like a little child within:
  All hearts of the earth shall find new birth
  And wake, no more to sin.
  • "Star of My Heart", st. 3

The Congo, and Other Poems (1914)

New York: The Macmillan Co

• 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.
  • "The Congo", pt. 1

• Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black,
  Cutting through the forest with a golden track.
  • "The Congo", pt. 1

• Be careful what you do,
  Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,
  And all of the other
  Gods of the Congo,
  Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
  • "The Congo", pt. 1

• Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle.
  • "The Congo", pt. 3

• It is portentous, and a thing of state
  That here at midnight, in our little town
  A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
  Near the old court-house pacing up and down.
  • "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight", st. 1

• A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
  A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
  Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
  The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
  • "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight", st. 3

•    And who will bring white peace
  That he may sleep upon his hill again?
  • "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight", st. 8

• Factory windows are always broken.
  Somebody's always throwing bricks,
  Somebody's always heaving cinders,
  Playing ugly Yahoo tricks.
  • "Factory Windows Are Always Broken", st. 1

Going-to-the-Stars (1926)

New York: D. Appleton and Co

• The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
  In the days of long ago,
  Ranged where the locomotives sing
  And the prairie flowers lie low.
  • "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes", l. 1

• They gore no more, they bellow no more,
  They trundle around the hills no more:—
  With the Blackfeet, lying low,
  With the Pawnees, lying low,
  Lying low.
  • "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes", l. 11

What It Means to Be a Poet in America (1926)

In The Saturday Evening Post (13 November 1926)

I have sung my songs to my own tunes.

• Whenever I begin to write a poem or draw a picture I am, in imagination, if not in reality, back in my room where I began to draw pen-and-ink pictures and write verses in my seventeenth year. Both windows of the room look down on the great Governor’s Yard of Illinois. This yard is a square block, a beautiful park. Our house is on so high a hill I can always look down upon the governor. Among my very earliest memories are those of seeing old Governor Oglesby leaning on his cane, marching about, calling his children about him.
  • p. 12, col. 1

• I am still making my living reciting my verses for crowds who refuse to buy my books. I must do this, as all American rhymers must, however sick I may be of the sound of my own voice.
  • p. 12, col. 3

• I have sung my songs to my own tunes for most of the English departments of the state universities of the forty-eight states of the nation, and the English departments of other universities and colleges; and I have been recalled to many of these seven and eight times, which matters are a source of great pride to me. And I have brought out three books where the songs were based on my own pen-and-ink pictures.
  • p. 45, cols 1–2

• Most years I owe no money and I have no money. Every university pays my way to the next town. That’s about all. No poet has ever made any money out of having his poetry published, and no poet ever will. If the fee is two hundred dollars, it is one hundred dollars for coming to town and one hundred for leaving inside of twenty-four hours. There has been no poetry in the history of the world that has made money for the poet. The New Poetry Movement began when Abel made a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain; but the sacrifice of Abel was not intended as a money-making idea. On the last great day, when Gabriel blows his trumpet, even if he blows it in sonnets, he will not do it for the money that is in it. If he does do it for the cash he will not be Gabriel and it will not be the last great day. It will be a second-rate Hollywood movie of the last great day, and business will continue as usual.
  • p. 45, col. 2

• The fact that you can write verse is in itself a certificate that you can write prose.
  • p. 46, col. 2

• Most of the good poetry, as I have said, has appeared in pamphlet form before the poet was known to the public. It is utterly impossible to make an income from verse, and one must win his worldly standing, and earn his living some other way. One of the most distinguished of the Middle Western poets supports himself by writing a movie column once a day. I do not know a poet in the Anglo-Saxon world who makes his living by poetry. Every single one of them makes his living in some other way.
  • p. 48, col. 3

• There were three great Virginia poets in the very beginning — George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson. "What!" you say. "We do not even know the names of their publishers. They were not poets!"
  Well, how do you know? Did you ever really read them? What do you know about it? Their very names will breathe poetry forever.
  • p. 48, col. 3

A Poet in America (1935)

Reported in Edgar Lee Masters, A Poet in America. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons

• I think that my first poetic impulse is for music; second a definite conception with the ring of the universe; third clearness of exposition.
  • p. 62

• Poetry is for the inner ear.
  • p. 310

External links

• Vachel Lindsay Association website- biography, essays, works
• Profile of Vachel Lindsay from "I Hear America Singing" (PBS), hosted by Thomas Hampson
• Vachel Lindsay Collection, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections
• Entry on Vachel Lindsay from Anthology of Modern American Poetry
• Works by Vachel Lindsay at Project Gutenberg
• "The Chinese Nightingale"
• "The Congo and Other Poems by Vachel Lindsay"