III—A RHYMED ADDRESS TO ALL RENEGADE CAMPBELLITES, EXHORTING THEM TO RETURN

O prodigal son, O recreant daughter,

When broken by the death of a child

You called for the greybeard Campbellite elder,

Who spoke as of old in the wild.

His voice held echoes of the deep woods of Kentucky.

He towered in apostolic state,

While the portrait of Campbell emerged from the dark:

That genius beautiful and great.

And millennial trumpets poised, half lifted,

Millennial trumpets that wait.

Like the woods of old Kentucky

The memories of childhood

Arch up to where gold chariot wheels go ringing,

To where the precious airs are terraces and roadways

For witnesses to God, forever singing.

Like Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, the memories of childhood

Go in and in forever underground

To river and fountain of whispering and mystery

And many a haunted hall without a sound.

To Indian hoards and carvings and graveyards unexplored.

To pits so deep a torch turns to a star

Whirling ’round and going down to the deepest rocks of earth,

To the fiery roots of forests brave and far.

III

As I built cob-houses with small cousins on the floor:

(The talk was not meant for me).

Daguerreotypes shone. The back log sizzled

And my grandmother traced the family tree.

Then she swept to the proverbs of Campbell again.

And we glanced at the portrait of that most benign of men

Looking down through the evening gleam

With a bit of Andrew Jackson’s air,

More of Henry Clay

And the statesmen of Thomas Jefferson’s day:

With the face of age,

And the flush of youth,

And that air of going on, forever free.

For once upon a time ...

Long, long ago ...

In the holy forest land

There was a jolly pre-millennial band,

When that text-armed apostle, Alexander Campbell

Held deathless debate with the wicked “infi-del.”

The clearing was a picnic ground.

Squirrels were barking.

The seventeen year locust charged by.

Wild turkeys perched on high.

And millions of wild pigeons

Broke the limbs of trees,

Then shut out the sun, as they swept on their way.

But ah, the wilder dove of God flew down

To bring a secret glory, and to stay,

With the proud hunter-trappers, patriarchs that came

To break bread together and to pray

And oh the music of each living throbbing thing

When Campbell arose,

A pillar of fire,

The great high priest of the Spring.

He stepped from out the Brush Run Meeting House

To make the big woods his cathedrals,

The river his baptismal font,

The rolling clouds his bells,

The storming skies his waterfalls,

His pastures and his wells.

Despite all sternness in his word

Richer grew the rushing blood

Within our fathers’ coldest thought.

Imagination at the flood

Made flowery all they heard.

The deep communion cup

Of the whole South lifted up.

Who were the witnesses, the great cloud of witnesses

With which he was compassed around?

The heroes of faith from the days of Abraham

Stood on that blue-grass ground—

While the battle-ax of thought

Hewed to the bone

That the utmost generation

Till the world was set right

Might have an America their own.

For religion Dionysian

Was far from Campbell’s doctrine.

He preached with faultless logic

An American Millennium:

The social order

Of a realist and farmer

With every neighbor

Within stone wall and border.

And the tongues of flame came down

Almost in spite of him.

And now all but that Pentecost is dim.

I walk the forest by the Daniel Boone trail.

By guide posts quaint.

And the blazes are faint

In the rough old bark

Of silver poplars

And elms once slim,

Now monoliths tall.

I walk the aisle,

The cathedral hall

That is haunted still

With chariots dim,

Whispering still

With debate and call.

I come to you from Campbell.

Turn again, prodigal

Haunted by his name!

Artist, singer, builder,

The forest’s son or daughter!

You, the blasphemer

Will yet know repentance,

And Campbell old and grey

Will lead you to the dream-side

Of a pennyroyal river.

While your proud heart is shaken

Your confession will be taken

And your sins baptized away.

You, statesman-philosopher,

Sage with high conceit

Who speak of revolutions, in long words,

And guide the little world as best you may:

I come to you from Campbell

And say he rides your way

And will wait with you the coming of his day.

His horse still threads the forest,

Though the storm be roaring down....

Campbell enters now your log-house door.

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

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