The Chinese Nightingale | Page 3

Poems,?by Vachel Lindsay. [Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Illinois Poet. 1879-1931.]
[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases capitalized.?Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces. Some errors have been corrected. Lines longer than 78 characters are broken according to metre, and the continuation is indented two spaces.]
The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems
By Vachel Lindsay?Author of "The Congo", "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven", "Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty", etc.
This Book is Dedicated to Sara Teasdale, Poet
Harriet Monroe awarded the Levinson Prize to "The Chinese Nightingale", as the best contribution to "Poetry: A Magazine of Verse", for the year 1915.
Table of Contents
First Section
The Chinese Nightingale
Second Section?America Watching the War, August, 1914, to April, 1917
Where Is the Real Non-resistant??Here's to the Mice!?When Bryan Speaks?To Jane Addams at the Hague
I. Speak Now for Peace?II. Tolstoi Is Plowing Yet?The Tale of the Tiger Tree?The Merciful Hand
Third Section?America at War with Germany, Beginning April, 1917
Our Mother Pocahontas?Concerning Emperors?Niagara?Mark Twain and Joan of Arc?The Bankrupt Peace Maker?"This, My Song, is made for Kerensky"
Fourth Section?Tragedies, Comedies, and Dreams
Our Guardian Angels and Their Children?Epitaphs for Two Players
I. Edwin Booth?II. John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian?Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress?Two Old Crows?The Drunkard's Funeral?The Raft?The Ghosts of the Buffaloes?The Broncho that Would Not Be Broken?The Prairie Battlements?The Flower of Mending?Alone in the Wind, on the Prairie?To Lady Jane?How I Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven
Fifth Section?The Poem Games
An Account of the Poem Games?The King of Yellow Butterflies?The Potatoes' Dance?The Booker Washington Trilogy
I. Simon Legree?II. John Brown?III. King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba?How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza
The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems
First Section
The Chinese Nightingale
A Song in Chinese Tapestries
"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,?"San Francisco sleeps as the dead --?Ended license, lust and play:?Why do you iron the night away??Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,?With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.?While the monster shadows glower and creep,?What can be better for man than sleep?"
"I will tell you a secret," Chang replied;?"My breast with vision is satisfied,?And I see green trees and fluttering wings,?And my deathless bird from Shanghai sings."?Then he lit five fire-crackers in a pan.?"Pop, pop," said the fire-crackers, "cra-cra-crack."?He lit a joss stick long and black.?Then the proud gray joss in the corner stirred;?On his wrist appeared a gray small bird,?And this was the song of the gray small bird:?"Where is the princess, loved forever,?Who made Chang first of the kings of men?"
And the joss in the corner stirred again;?And the carved dog, curled in his arms, awoke,?Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke.?It piled in a maze round the ironing-place,?And there on the snowy table wide?Stood a Chinese lady of high degree,?With a scornful, witching, tea-rose face. . . .?Yet she put away all form and pride,?And laid her glimmering veil aside?With a childlike smile for Chang and for me.
The walls fell back, night was aflower,?The table gleamed in a moonlit bower,?While Chang, with a countenance carved of stone,?Ironed and ironed, all alone.?And thus she sang to the busy man Chang:?"Have you forgotten. . . .?Deep in the ages, long, long ago,?I was your sweetheart, there on the sand --?Storm-worn beach of the Chinese land??We sold our grain in the peacock town?Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown --?Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown. . . .
"When all the world was drinking blood?From the skulls of men and bulls?And all the world had swords and clubs of stone,?We drank our tea in China beneath the sacred spice-trees,?And heard the curled waves of the harbor moan.?And this gray bird, in Love's first spring,?With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing,?Captured the world with his carolling.?Do you remember, ages after,?At last the world we were born to own??You were the heir of the yellow throne --?The world was the field of the Chinese man?And we were the pride of the Sons of Han??We copied deep books and we carved in jade,?And wove blue silks in the mulberry shade. . . ."
"I remember, I remember?That Spring came on forever,?That Spring came on forever,"?Said the Chinese nightingale.
My heart was filled with marvel and dream,?Though I saw the western street-lamps gleam,?Though dawn was bringing the western day,?Though Chang was a laundryman ironing away. . . .?Mingled there with the streets and alleys,?The railroad-yard and the clock-tower bright,?Demon clouds crossed ancient valleys;?Across wide lotus-ponds of light?I marked a giant firefly's flight.
And the lady, rosy-red,?Flourished her fan, her shimmering fan,?Stretched her hand toward Chang, and said:?"Do you remember,?Ages after,?Our palace of heart-red stone??Do you remember?The little doll-faced children?With their lanterns full of moon-fire,?That came from all the empire?Honoring the throne? --?The loveliest fete and carnival?Our world had ever known??The sages sat about us?With their heads bowed in their beards,?With proper meditation on the sight.?Confucius was not born;?We lived in those great