Giant Hours With Poet Preachers | Page 6

hate, O wasteful friend: Put hate away until the ages end. Have you an ancient wound? Forget the wrong. Out in my West, a forest loud with song Towers high and green over a field of snow, Over a glacier buried far below."
The Shoes of Happiness.
And if all the world would learn the meaning of this great phrase, "There is no time for hate," the world would happier be. Good script for the journey? The best there is, is to know "There is no time for hate."

II
VACHEL LINDSAY, POET OF TOWN; AND CITY TOO [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from the following works: The Congo, and General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, Published by the Macmillan Company, New York.]
A STUDY OF CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES IN VILLAGE AND CITY; ON TEMPERANCE, MISSIONS, AND RACES
Vachel Lindsay is not only a poet but he is also a preacher. I do not know whether he is ordained or not, but in a leaflet that he recently sent me, he says, "Mr. Lindsay offers the following sermons to be preached on short notice and without a collection, in any chapel that will open its doors as he passes by: 'The Gospel of the Hearth,' 'The Gospel of Voluntary Poverty,' 'The Holiness of Beauty.'"
His truly great book, "The Congo," that poem which so sympathetically catches the spirit of the uplift of the Negro race through Christianity, that weird, musical, chanting, swinging, singing, sweeping, weeping, rhythmic, flowing, swaying, clanging, banging, leaping, laughing, groaning, moaning book of the elementals, was inspired suddenly, one Sabbath evening, as the poet sat in church listening to a returned missionary speaking on "The Congo." Nor a Poe nor a Lanier ever wrote more weirdly or more musically.
[Illustration: VACHEL LINDSAY]
The poet himself, Christian to the bone, suggests that his poetry must be chanted to get the full sweep and beauty. This I have done, alone by my wood fire of a long California evening, and have found it strangely, beautifully, wonderfully full of memories of church. I think that it is the echo of old hymns that I catch in his poetry. Biblical they are, in their simplicity, Christian until they drip with love.
CHRIST AND THE CITY SOUL
I think that no Christian poet has so caught the soul of the real city. One phrase that links Christ with the city is the old-fashioned yet ever thrilling phrase, "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit."
An electrical sign suggests prayer to him. It is a unique thought in "A Rhyme About An Electrical Advertising Sign," the lines of which startle one almost with their newness:
"Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies, As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise. And we shall be lifted rejoicing by night, Till we join with the planets who choir their delight. The signs in the street and the signs in the skies Shall make a new Zodiac guiding the wise, And Broadway make one, with that marvelous stair That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer."
The Congo.
He looks straight up above the signs to heaven. But he does not forget to look down also, where the people are, the folks that walk and live and crawl under the electric signs. In "Galahad, Knight Who Perished" (a poem dedicated to all crusaders against the international and interstate traffic in young girls), this phrase rings and rings its way into Christian consciousness:
"Galahad--knight who perished--awaken again, Teach us to fight for immaculate ways among men."
The Congo.
And again and again one is rudely awakened from his ease by such lines as "The leaden-eyed" children of the city which he pictures:
"Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly; Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap; Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve; Not that they die, but that they die like sheep."
The Congo.
Who has not seen factory windows in village, town, and city, and who has not known that "Factory windows are always broken"? How this smacks of pall, and smoke, and dirt, and grind, and hurt and little weak children, slaves of industry! Thank God, Vachel Lindsay, that the Christian Church has found an ally in you; and poet and preacher together--for they are both akin--pray God we may soon abolish forever child slavery. Yes, no wonder "Factory windows are always broken." The children break them because they hate a prison.
The "Coal Heaver," "The Scissors Grinder," "The Mendicant," "The Tramp," all so smacking of the city, have their interpretation.
I wish in these pages might be quoted all of "The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit," for it daringly, beautifully, and strongly carries into the new philosophy which Mr. Lindsay is introducing the thought