Giant Hours With Poet Preachers | Page 6

infinite
anchorage? Who does not need to know that just the tiny threads of
love and faith will draw greater cords and greater, stronger ropes until
at last the chasm between man and God on the journey is bridged, and
we may be anchored to him forever. This indeed is good script for the
journey of life Godward.
"THERE IS NO TIME FOR HATE"
The world is full of hate these days. War-mad Germany produced "The
Hymn of Hate," the lowest song that ever was written in the history of
the world. It seems impossible that a censorship so strict could ever let
such a mass of mire out to the world. But when one reads this
Markham poem, he somehow feels that life is so big, and yet so brief,
that even in war we are all brother-men and, as the opening lines say,
"There is no time for 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