General William Booth Enters into Heaven : and other poems Part 13

Now let each child be joined as to a church To her perpetual hopes, each man ordained: Let every street be made a reverent aisle Where Music grows and Beauty is unchained.

Let Science and Machinery and Trade Be slaves of her, and make her all in all, Building against our blatant, restless time An unseen, skilful, medieval wall.

Let every citizen be rich toward G.o.d.

Let Christ the beggar, teach divinity.

Let no man rule who holds his money dear.

Let this, our city, be our luxury.

We should build parks that students from afar Would choose to starve in, rather than go home, Fair little squares, with Phidian ornament, Food for the spirit, milk and honeycomb.

Songs shall be sung by us in that good day, Songs we have written, blood within the rhyme Beating, as when Old England still was glad,-- The purple, rich Elizabethan time.

Say, is my prophecy too fair and far?

I only know, unless her faith be high, The soul of this, our Nineveh, is doomed, Our little Babylon will surely die.

Some city on the breast of Illinois No wiser and no better at the start By faith shall rise redeemed, by faith shall rise Bearing the western glory in her heart.

The genius of the Maple, Elm and Oak, The secret hidden in each grain of corn, The glory that the prairie angels sing At night when sons of Life and Love are born,

Born but to struggle, squalid and alone, Broken and wandering in their early years.

When will they make our dusty streets their goal, Within our attics hide their sacred tears?

When will they start our vulgar blood athrill With living language, words that set us free?

When will they make a path of beauty clear Between our riches and our liberty?

We must have many Lincoln-hearted men.

A city is not builded in a day.

And they must do their work, and come and go While countless generations pa.s.s away.

[End of original text.]

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931): (Vachel is p.r.o.nounced Vay-chul, that is, it rhymes with 'Rachel').

Vachel Lindsay, of Springfield, Illinois, is best known for his efforts to restore the vocal tradition to poetry. He made a journey on foot as far as New Mexico, taking along copies of a pamphlet, "Rhymes to be Traded for Bread", for the purpose the t.i.tle suggests.

He wrote of this journey in "Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty".

"The Eagle that is Forgotten" and "The Congo" are his best-known poems, and appear in his first two volumes of verse, "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" (1913) and "The Congo" (1914).

As a sidenote, he became close friends with the poet Sara Teasdale (well worth reading in her own right--perhaps the better poet), and his third volume of verse, "The Chinese Nightingale" (1917), is dedicated to her. In turn, she wrote a memorial verse for him after he committed suicide in 1931.