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]