The Congo and Other Poems | Page 7

way
For a Congo paradise, for babes at play,
For
sacred capitals, for temples clean.
Gone were the skull-faced
witch-men lean.
# In a rather high key -- as delicately as possible. # There, where the
wild ghost-gods had wailed
A million boats of the angels sailed

With oars of silver, and prows of blue
And silken pennants that the
sun shone through.
'Twas a land transfigured, 'twas a new creation.

Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation
And on through the
backwoods clearing flew: --
# To the tune of "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices". #
"Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle.
Never again will he hoo-doo
you.
Never again will he hoo-doo you."

Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men,
And only the
vulture dared again
By the far, lone mountains of the moon
To cry,
in the silence, the Congo tune: --
# Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper. # "Mumbo-Jumbo
will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Mumbo . . .
Jumbo . . . will . . . hoo-doo . . . you."
This poem, particularly the third section, was suggested by an allusion
in a sermon by my pastor, F. W. Burnham, to the heroic life and death
of Ray Eldred. Eldred was a missionary of the Disciples of Christ who
perished while swimming a treacherous branch of the Congo. See "A
Master Builder on the Congo", by Andrew F. Hensey, published by
Fleming H. Revell.
The Santa Fe Trail
(A Humoresque)
I asked the old Negro, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He
answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark, or
thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane."
I. In which a Racing Auto comes from the East
# To be sung delicately, to an improvised tune. # This is the order of
the music of the morning: --
First, from the far East comes but a
crooning.
The crooning turns to a sunrise singing.
Hark to the
*calm*-horn, *balm*-horn, *psalm*-horn.
Hark to the *faint*-horn,
*quaint*-horn, *saint*-horn. . . .
# To be sung or read with great speed. # Hark to the *pace*-horn,
*chase*-horn, *race*-horn.
And the holy veil of the dawn has gone.

Swiftly the brazen car comes on.
It burns in the East as the sunrise
burns.
I see great flashes where the far trail turns.
Its eyes are lamps
like the eyes of dragons.
It drinks gasoline from big red flagons.

Butting through the delicate mists of the morning,
It comes like

lightning, goes past roaring.
It will hail all the wind-mills, taunting,
ringing,
Dodge the cyclones,
Count the milestones,
On through
the ranges the prairie-dog tills --
Scooting past the cattle on the
thousand hills. . . .
# To be read or sung in a rolling
bass,
with some deliberation. #
Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn,
Ho for the *gay*-horn,
*bark*-horn, *bay*-horn.
*Ho for Kansas, land that restores us

When houses choke us, and great books bore us!
Sunrise Kansas,
harvester's Kansas,
A million men have found you before us.*
II. In which Many Autos pass Westward
# In an even, deliberate, narrative manner. # I want live things in their
pride to remain.
I will not kill one grasshopper vain
Though he eats
a hole in my shirt like a door.
I let him out, give him one chance more.

Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim,
Grasshopper lyrics
occur to him.
I am a tramp by the long trail's border,
Given to squalor, rags and
disorder.
I nap and amble and yawn and look,
Write fool-thoughts
in my grubby book,
Recite to the children, explore at my ease,

Work when I work, beg when I please,
Give crank-drawings, that
make folks stare
To the half-grown boys in the sunset glare,
And
get me a place to sleep in the hay
At the end of a live-and-let-live
day.
I find in the stubble of the new-cut weeds
A whisper and a feasting,
all one needs:
The whisper of the strawberries, white and red
Here
where the new-cut weeds lie dead.
But I would not walk all alone till I die
Without some life-drunk
horns going by.
Up round this apple-earth they come
Blasting the
whispers of the morning dumb: --
Cars in a plain realistic row.
And

fair dreams fade
When the raw horns blow.
On each snapping pennant
A big black name: --
The careering city

Whence each car came.
# Like a train-caller in a Union Depot. # They tour from Memphis,
Atlanta, Savannah,
Tallahassee and Texarkana.
They tour from St.
Louis, Columbus, Manistee,
They tour from Peoria, Davenport,
Kankakee.
Cars from Concord, Niagara, Boston,
Cars from Topeka,
Emporia, and Austin.
Cars from Chicago, Hannibal, Cairo.
Cars
from Alton, Oswego, Toledo.
Cars from Buffalo, Kokomo, Delphi,

Cars from Lodi, Carmi, Loami.
Ho for Kansas, land that restores us

When houses choke us, and great books bore us!
While I watch the
highroad
And look at the