It came into our eyes,
It came into our hearts.
Thy Kingdom come, O Lord,
As once it came,
May it come again!
THE WORLD IS MY PARISH
XXXVIII. BLOOM FOR EVER, O REPUBLIC!
We crossed the line again and returned to the United States. And then we went to the city of St. Paul, and we saw the falls where Minnehaha and Hiawatha met. We stood on the high bank of the Mississippi and considered meditatively the mounds of the mound-builders there. What more impressive symbol for a world-traveller than these pre-historic mounds—there before the Indians came—emblems of the infinite forgotten past of man! Then we went to Chicago. We saw the beautiful Wrigley building which has risen to look from drab Chicago over Michigan Lake—a building raised by the profits of gum! Vachel introduced me to the first sponsor of his verse, Harriet Monroe, of “Poetry,” and he described to me how he and W. B. Yeats once divided the annual poetry prize of Chicago, and how he was to have read aloud the prize poem—“General William Booth Enters Heaven,” but to the surprise of the company assembled gave his new, hitherto unheard-of work “The Congo,” a poem which at that time must have been dumfounding in its novelty. Then Yeats, who seemed to have snubbed every one including the poet himself, made a very generous speech in favour of Lindsay’s genius. And we met Chicago’s poet, Carl Sandburg, a rugged Scandinavian with brown hair who claimed me as a “Nordic” also. And he carried a large and old guitar on which he thrummed when reciting his poems. He has heard Negro Blues in the South, and loves the coloured folk, and has a whole repertoire of blues which he will sing you if you will. I had a glass of beer with Sandburg in Milwaukee, the only glass of anything of the kind offered me this time in these dry United States. I met Ridgely Torrance, gentle and whimsical, with one long lock of hair on his head like a Russian khokhol. Curiously enough, he also had been enchanted by the Negroes and knew more about them than us all, and he read poetry to us. There I met beautiful Zona Gale of Portage whom, it is said, nearly every literary man who ever met her has at some time or other loved. And meeting Zona I met Lulu Bett. We met delectable Isidora, once queen of Springfield, now queen of another city. And we stayed with Mrs. William Vaughan Moody, widow of that dramatist and poet who wrote “The Great Divide” and “The Fire-Bringer.” We were a rough-looking couple to be a lady’s guests, but Harriet Moody loves the whole writing world for her husband’s sake and took us in, and I found in her what so many know—a vivid personality, endlessly kind. And couldn’t she cook! We loved her for her poetry and we loved her for her pies.