The Congo and Other Poems | Page 3

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*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
This etext was prepared by Alan R. Light
([email protected]
). The original text was entered
(manually) twice, and electronically compared to ensure as clean a
copy as practicable.
The Congo and Other Poems
By Vachel Lindsay [Nicholas Vachel
Lindsay, Illinois Artist. 1879-1931.]
[Note on text: Due to the distinctions made by the author
between
emphasis by capitalization and emphasis by use of italics, especially in
those poems intended to be read aloud,
italicized words, phrases, and
sections are marked by asterisks (*). Lines longer than 78 characters
are broken, and the continuation is indented two spaces. Also, a great
many obvious errors
have been corrected. These are mostly errors in
punctuation, often inconsistent with other parts of the text -- a few were
typos.]
[More notes: The `stage-directions' given in "The Congo" and those
poems which are meant to be read aloud, are traditionally printed to the
right side of the first line it refers to. This is possible, but impracticable,
to imitate in a simple ASCII text. Therefore these `stage-directions' are
given on the line BEFORE the first line they refer to, and are
furthermore indented 20 spaces and enclosed by #s to keep it clear to
the reader which parts are text and which parts directions.]
[This electronic text was transcribed from a reprint of the original
edition, which was first published in New York, in September, 1914.

Due to a great deal of irregularity between titles in the table of contents
and in the text of the original, there are some slight differences from the
original in these matters -- with the more complete titles replacing
cropped ones. In one case they are different enough that both are given,
and "Twenty Poems in which. . . ." was originally "Twenty Moon
Poems" in the table of contents -- the odd thing about both these titles is
that there are actually twenty-TWO moon poems.]

The Congo and Other Poems
By Vachel Lindsay
With an introduction by
Harriet Monroe
Editor of "Poetry"
Introduction. By Harriet Monroe
When `Poetry, A Magazine of Verse', was first published in Chicago in
the autumn of 1912, an Illinois poet, Vachel Lindsay,
was, quite
appropriately, one of its first discoveries.
It may be not quite without
significance that the issue of January, 1913, which led off with
`General William Booth Enters into Heaven', immediately followed the
number in which the great poet of Bengal, Rabindra Nath Tagore, was
first presented to the American public, and that these two antipodal
poets soon appeared in person among the earliest visitors to the editor.
For the coming together of East and West may prove to be the great
event of the approaching era,
and if the poetry of the now famous
Bengali laureate
garners the richest wisdom and highest spirituality of
his ancient race, so one may venture to believe that the young Illinois
troubadour brings from Lincoln's city an authentic strain of the lyric
message of this newer world.
It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to mention Mr. Lindsay's loyalty to the
people of his place and hour, or the training in sympathy with their
aims and ideals which he has achieved through
vagabondish
wanderings in the Middle West. And we may permit time to decide
how far he expresses their emotion. But it may be opportune to
emphasize his plea for poetry as a song art, an art appealing to the ear
rather than the eye. The first section of this volume is especially an
effort to restore poetry to its proper place -- the audience-chamber, and
take it out of the library, the closet. In the library it has become, so far
as the people are concerned, almost a lost art,
and perhaps it can be
restored to the people only through
a renewal of its appeal to the ear.
I am tempted to quote from Mr. Lindsay's explanatory note
which
accompanied three of these poems when they were first printed in

`Poetry'. He said:
"Mr. Yeats asked me recently in Chicago, `What are we going to do to
restore the primitive singing of poetry?' I find what Mr. Yeats means by
`the primitive singing of poetry' in Professor Edward Bliss Reed's new
volume on `The English Lyric'. He says in his chapter on the definition
of the lyric: `With the Greeks "song" was an all-embracing term. It
included the crooning of the nurse to the child . . .
the half-sung chant
of the mower or sailor . . . the formal ode sung by the poet.