For permission to reprint some of the verses in this volume the author is indebted to the courtesy of the editors and publishers of The Chicago Daily News, Poetry (Chicago), Contemporary Verse, The New Republic, The Forum, Books and the Book World of the New York Sun, Others, The Red Cross Magazine, Youth, The Independent, and William Stanley Braithwaite’s anthology entitled “Victory.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| A Word on California, Photoplays, and Saint Francis | [xiii] |
| FIRST SECTION | |
| THE LONGER PIECES, WITH INTERLUDES | |
| The Golden Whales of California | [3] |
| Kalamazoo | [11] |
| John L. Sullivan, the Strong Boy of Boston | [14] |
| Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan | [18] |
| Rameses II | [31] |
| Moses | [32] |
| A Rhyme for All Zionists | [33] |
| A Meditation on the Sun | [38] |
| Dante | [42] |
| The Comet of Prophecy | [43] |
| Shantung, or the Empire of China Is Crumbling Down | [46] |
| The Last Song of Lucifer | [59] |
| SECOND SECTION | |
| A RHYMED SCENARIO, SOME POEM GAMES, AND THE LIKE | |
| A Doll’s “Arabian Nights” | [71] |
| The Lame Boy and the Fairy | [77] |
| The Blacksmith’s Serenade | [83] |
| The Apple Blossom Snow Blues | [87] |
| The Daniel Jazz | [91] |
| When Peter Jackson Preached in the Old Church | [95] |
| The Conscientious Deacon | [97] |
| Davy Jones’ Door-Bell | [99] |
| The Sea Serpent Chantey | [101] |
| The Little Turtle | [104] |
| THIRD SECTION | |
| COBWEBS AND CABLES | |
| The Scientific Aspiration | [107] |
| The Visit to Mab | [108] |
| The Song of the Sturdy Snails | [110] |
| Another Word on the Scientific Aspiration | [113] |
| Dancing for a Prize | [114] |
| Cold Sunbeams | [116] |
| For All Who Ever Sent Lace Valentines | [117] |
| My Lady Is Compared to a Young Tree | [120] |
| To Eve, Man’s Dream of Wifehood, as Described by Milton | [121] |
| A Kind of Scorn | [123] |
| Harps in Heaven | [125] |
| The Celestial Circus | [126] |
| The Fire-Laddie, Love | [128] |
| FOURTH SECTION | |
| RHYMES CONCERNING THE LATE WORLD WAR, AND THE NEXT WAR | |
| In Memory of My Friend Joyce Kilmer, Poet and Soldier | [133] |
| The Tiger on Parade | [136] |
| The Fever Called War | [137] |
| Stanzas in Just the Right Tone for the Spirited Gentleman Who Would Conquer Mexico | [138] |
| The Modest Jazz-Bird | [140] |
| The Statue of Old Andrew Jackson | [144] |
| Sew the Flags Together | [146] |
| Justinian | [149] |
| The Voice of St. Francis of Assisi | [150] |
| In Which Roosevelt Is Compared to Saul | [151] |
| Hail to the Sons of Roosevelt | [153] |
| The Spacious Days of Roosevelt | [155] |
| FIFTH SECTION | |
| RHYMES OF THE MIDDLE WEST AND SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS | |
| When the Mississippi Flowed in Indiana | [159] |
| The Fairy from the Apple-Seed | [161] |
| A Hot Time in the Old Town | [163] |
| The Dream of All of the Springfield Writers | [166] |
| The Springfield of the Far Future | [168] |
| After Reading the Sad Story of the Fall of Babylon | [170] |
| Alexander Campbell | [172] |
A WORD ON CALIFORNIA, PHOTOPLAYS, AND SAINT FRANCIS
In The Art of the Moving Picture, in the chapter on California and America, I said, in part:
“The moving picture captains of industry, like the California gold finders of 1849, making colossal fortunes in two or three years, have the same glorious irresponsibility and occasional need of the sheriff. They are Californians more literally than this. Around Los Angeles the greatest and most characteristic moving picture colonies are built. Each photoplay magazine has its California letter, telling of the putting up of new studios, and the transfer of actors with much slap-you-on-the-back personal gossip.
“... Every type of the photoplay but the intimate is founded on some phase of the out-of doors. Being thus dependent, the plant can best be set up where there is no winter. Besides this, the Los Angeles region has the sea, the mountains, the desert, and many kinds of grove and field....
“If the photoplay is the consistent utterance of its scenes, if the actors are incarnations of the land they walk upon, as they should be, California indeed stands a chance to achieve through the films an utterance of her own. Will this land, furthest west, be the first to capture the inner spirit of this newest and most curious of the arts?...
“People who revere the Pilgrim Fathers of 1620 have often wished those gentlemen had moored their bark in the region of Los Angeles, rather than Plymouth Rock, that Boston had been founded there. At last that landing is achieved.
“Patriotic art students have discussed with mingled irony and admiration the Boston domination of the only American culture of the nineteenth century, namely, literature. Indianapolis has had her day since then. Chicago is lifting her head. Nevertheless Boston still controls the text book in English, and dominates our high schools. Ironic feelings in this matter, on the part of western men, are based somewhat on envy and illegitimate cussedness, but are also grounded in the honest hope of a healthful rivalry. They want new romanticists and artists as indigenous to their soil as was Hawthorne to witch-haunted Salem, or Longfellow to the chestnuts of his native heath. Whatever may be said of the patriarchs, from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Amos Bronson Alcott, they were true sons of the New England stone fences and meeting houses. They could not have been born or nurtured anywhere else on the face of the earth.