Car poems
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Yankee Doodle
© Vachel Lindsay
This poem is intended as a description of a sort of Blashfield mural painting on the sky. To be sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle, yet in a slower, more orotund fashion. It is presumably an exercise for an entertainment on the evening of Washington's Birthday.
Dawn this morning burned all red
Watching them in wonder.
There I saw our spangled flag
Our Mother Pocahontas
© Vachel Lindsay
She sings of lilacs, maples, wheat,
Her own soil sings beneath her feet,
Of springtime
And Virginia,
Our Mother, Pocahontas.
The Adieu
© George Gordon Byron
Written Under The Impression That The Author Would Soon Die.
Adieu, thou Hill! where early joy
Spread roses o'er my brow;
The Stealing Of The Mare - VII
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Said the Narrator:
And when they had lit the fire, while Alia watched the kindling, behold, her fear was great, and her eyes looked to the right and to the left hand, because that Abu Zeyd had promised her that he would return to the camp; and while she was in this wise, suddenly she saw Abu Zeyd standing in the midst of the Arabs who were around her. And he was in disguisement as a dervish, or one of those who ask alms. And he saw that she was about to speak. But he signed to her that she should be silent: as it were he would say, ``Fear not, for I am here.'' And when she was sure that it was indeed he Abu Zeyd and none other, then smiled she on him very sweetly, and said, ``Thine be the victory, and I will be thy ransom. Nor shall thy enemies prevail against thee.'' But he answered with a sign, ``Of a surety thou shalt see somewhat that shall astonish thee.'' And this he said as the flames of the fire broke forth.
Now the cause of the coming of Abu Zeyd to the place was in this wise. After that he had gone away, and had taken with him the mare, and that his mind had entered into its perplexity as to what might befall Alia from her father, lest he should seize on her and inquire what had happened, and why she had cared nothing for her own people or for her wounded brother, and why she had cried to Abu Zeyd, then said he to himself, ``Of a surety I must return to her, and ascertain the event.'' And looking about him, he made discovery of a cave known as yet to no man, and he placed in it the mare, and gathered grass for her, and closed the door of the cave with stones. Then clothing himself as a dervish, he made his plan how he should return to the tents of Agheyl. And forthwith he found Alia in the straits already told, and he made his thought known to her by signs, and by signs she gave him to understand her answers.
And at this point the Narrator began again to sing, and it was in the following verses:
Heroism
© William Cowper
There was a time when Ætna's silent fire
Slept unperceived, the mountain yet entire;
The Knight in Disguise
© Vachel Lindsay
Is this Sir Philip Sidney, this loud clown,
The darling of the glad and gaping town?
The Ideal
© Charles Harpur
Spirit of Dreams! When many a toilsome height
Shut paradise from exiled Adams sight,
To Lady Jane
© Vachel Lindsay
Romance was always young.
You come today
Just eight years old
With marvellous dark hair.
Genesis
© Vachel Lindsay
O Eve with the fire-lit breast
And child-face red and white!
I heaped the great logs high!
That was our bridal night.
The Moon is a Painter
© Vachel Lindsay
He coveted her portrait.
He toiled as she grew gay.
She loved to see him labor
In that devoted way.
The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race
© Vachel Lindsay
I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERYFat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,
A deep rolling bass.
Hymn To Colour
© George Meredith
With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared,
And made them on each side a shadow seem.
Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared,
Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream
To fall on daylight; and night puts away
Her darker veil for grey.
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
© Vachel Lindsay
IT is portentious, 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.
Drying Their Wings
© Vachel Lindsay
What the Carpenter SaidTHE moon's a cottage with a door.
Some folks can see it plain.
Look, you may catch a glint of light,
A sparkle through the pane,
Rafferty's Racin' Mare
© William Percy French
You've not seen Rafferty round this way?
He's a man with a broken hat,
The Young British Soldier
© Rudyard Kipling
When the 'arf-made recruity goes out to the East
'E acts like a babe an' 'e drinks like a beast,
An' 'e wonders because 'e is frequent deceased
Ere 'e's fit for to serve as a soldier.
The Wishing-Caps
© Rudyard Kipling
Life's all getting and giving,
I've only myself to give.
What shall I do for a living?
I've only one life to live.
Wilful Missing
© Rudyard Kipling
(Deserters)
There is a world outside the one you know,
To which for curiousness 'Ell can't compare--
It is the place where "wilful-missings" go,
As we can testify, for we are there.
