An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie / Vachel Lindsay

An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie

(In the Beginning)

The sun is a huntress young,
The sun is a red, red joy,
The sun is an Indian girl,
Of the tribe of the Illinois.

(Mid-Morning)

The sun is a smouldering fire,
That creeps through the high gray plain,
And leaves not a bush of cloud
To blossom with flowers of rain.

(Noon)

The sun is a wounded deer,
That treads pale grass in the skies,
Shaking his golden horns,
Flashing his baleful eyes.

(Sunset)

The sun is an eagle old,
There in the windless west.
Atop of the spirit-cliffs
He builds him a crimson nest.

~~
Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
from Rhymes to be Traded for Bread, 1912

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Vachel Lindsay biography

"An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie" read by Narad.

Courtesy The Mother & Sri Aurobindo: E-library.

A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign / Vachel Lindsay

     
A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign

I look on the specious electrical light
Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white,
Wickedly red or malignantly green
Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen.
Showing, while millions of souls hurry on,
The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn,
By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl,
Starting new fads for the shame-weary girl,
By maggoty motions in sickening line
Proclaiming a hat or a soup or a wine,
While there far above the steep cliffs of the street
The stars sing a message elusive and sweet.

Now man cannot rest in his pleasure and toil
His clumsy contraptions of coil upon coil
Till the thing he invents, in its use and its range,
Leads on to the marvellous CHANGE BEYOND CHANGE.
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 marvellous stair
That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer.

~~
Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
from The Congo, and other poems, 1914

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Vachel Lindsay biography

"A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign" courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

The Dove of New Snow / Vachel Lindsay

         
The Dove of New Snow

I give you a house of snow,
I give you the flag of the world above it,
I give you snow-bushes
In a long row,
I give you a snow dove,
And ask you
To love it.

The snow-dove flies in
At the snow-house window,
He is a ghost
And he casts no shadow,
His cry is the cry of love
From the meadow,
The meadow of spring where we walked in a glow,
The glittering, angelic meadow.

---
Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Vachel Lindsay biography

The Eagle That Is Forgotten / Vachel Lindsay

     

The Eagle That Is Forgotten

(John P. Altgeld. Born December 30, 1847;

died March 12, 1902)

Sleep softy . . . eagle forgotten . . . under the stone,
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
“We have buried him now,” thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced.
They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced.
They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you, day after day.
Now you were ended. They praised you, . . . and laid you away.

The others, that mourned you in silence and terror and truth,
The widow bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth,
The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor,
That should have remembered forever, . . . remember no more.

Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call,
The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall?
They call on the names of a hundred high-valiant ones,
A hundred white eagles have risen, the sons of your sons.
The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began,
The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man.

Sleep softy . . . eagle forgotten . . . under the stone,
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man that kindled the flame —
To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name,
To live in mankind, far, far more than to live in a name! —

---
Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
from General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, and other poems, 1913

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Vachel Lindsay biography

"The Eagle That Is Forgotten" read for LibriVox. Courtesy Thi Thuy Bui.