The Congo and Other Poems | Page 8

sky,
While I watch the clouds in amazing
grandeur
Roll their legions without rain
Over the blistering Kansas
plain --
While I sit by the milestone
And watch the sky,
The
United States
Goes by.
# To be given very harshly,
with a snapping explosiveness.
#
Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking.
Listen to the quack-horns,
slack and clacking.
Way down the road, trilling like a toad,
Here
comes the *dice*-horn, here comes the *vice*-horn,
Here comes the
*snarl*-horn, *brawl*-horn, *lewd*-horn,
Followed by the
*prude*-horn, bleak and squeaking: --
(Some of them from Kansas,
some of them from Kansas.)
Here comes the *hod*-horn,
*plod*-horn, *sod*-horn,
Nevermore-to-*roam*-horn, *loam*-horn,
*home*-horn.
(Some of them from Kansas, some of them from
Kansas.)
# To be read or sung, well-nigh in a whisper. # Far away the
Rachel-Jane
Not defeated by the horns
Sings amid a hedge of
thorns: --
"Love and life,
Eternal youth --

Sweet, sweet, sweet,
sweet,
Dew and glory,
Love and truth,
Sweet, sweet, sweet,

sweet."
# Louder and louder, faster and faster. # WHILE SMOKE-BLACK
FREIGHTS ON THE DOUBLE-TRACKED RAILROAD,

DRIVEN AS THOUGH BY THE FOUL-FIEND'S OX-GOAD,

SCREAMING TO THE WEST COAST, SCREAMING TO THE
EAST,
CARRY OFF A HARVEST, BRING BACK A FEAST,

HARVESTING MACHINERY AND HARNESS FOR THE
BEAST.
THE HAND-CARS WHIZ, AND RATTLE ON THE
RAILS,
THE SUNLIGHT FLASHES ON THE TIN
DINNER-PAILS.
# In a rolling bass, with increasing deliberation. # And then, in an
instant,
Ye modern men,
Behold the procession once again,
# With a snapping explosiveness. #
Listen to the iron-horns, ripping,
racking,
Listen to the *wise*-horn, desperate-to-*advise*-horn,

Listen to the *fast*-horn, *kill*-horn, *blast*-horn. . . .
# To be sung or read well-nigh in a whisper. # Far away the
Rachel-Jane
Not defeated by the horns
Sings amid a hedge of
thorns: --
Love and life,
Eternal youth,
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,

Dew and glory,
Love and truth.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.
# To be brawled in the beginning
with a
snapping explosiveness, ending
in a languorous chant. #
The mufflers open on a score of cars
With wonderful thunder,

CRACK, CRACK, CRACK,
CRACK-CRACK,
CRACK-CRACK,
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK, . . .
Listen to the
gold-horn . . .
Old-horn . . .
Cold-horn . . .
And all of the tunes, till
the night comes down
On hay-stack, and ant-hill, and wind-bitten
town.
# To be sung to exactly the same
whispered tune

as the first five lines. #
Then far in the west, as in the beginning,
Dim in the distance, sweet
in retreating,
Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn,
Hark
to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn. . . .
# This section beginning
sonorously,
ending in a languorous whisper.
#
They are hunting the goals that they understand: --
San Francisco and
the brown sea-sand.
My goal is the mystery the beggars win.
I am
caught in the web the night-winds spin.
The edge of the wheat-ridge
speaks to me.
I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree.
And now I
hear, as I sit all alone
In the dusk, by another big Santa Fe stone,

The souls of the tall corn gathering round
And the gay little souls of
the grass in the ground.
Listen to the tale the cotton-wood tells.

Listen to the wind-mills, singing o'er the wells.
Listen to the whistling
flutes without price
Of myriad prophets out of paradise.
Harken to
the wonder
That the night-air carries. . . .
Listen . . . to . . . the . . .
whisper . . .
Of . . . the . . . prairie . . . fairies
Singing o'er the fairy plain: --
# To the same whispered tune as the
Rachel-Jane song --
but very slowly. #
"Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.
Love and glory,
Stars and rain,

Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. . . ."
The Firemen's Ball
Section One
"Give the engines room,
Give the engines room."
Louder, faster

The little band-master
Whips up the fluting,
Hurries up the tooting.

He thinks that he stands,

# To be read, or chanted, with the
heavy