Collected poems by Vachel Lindsay :: :: University of Virginia Library

O prodigal son, O recreant daughter,
When broken by the death of a child
You called for the graybeard Campbellite elder,
Who spoke as of old in the wild.
His voice held echoes of the deep woods of Kentucky.
He towered in apostolic state,
While the portrait of Campbell emerged from the dark:
That genius beautiful and great.
And millennial trumpets poised, half lifted,
Millennial trumpets that wait.

II

Like the woods of old Kentucky
The memories of childhood
Arch up to where gold chariot wheels go ringing,
To where the precious airs are terraces and roadways

355

For witnesses to God, forever singing.
Like Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, the memories of childhood
Go in and in forever underground
To river and fountain of whispering and mystery
And many a haunted hall without a sound.
To Indian hoards and carvings and graveyards unexplored.
To pits so deep a torch turns to a star
Whirling 'round and going down to the deepest rocks of earth,
To the fiery roots of forests brave and far.

III

As I built cob-houses with small cousins on the floor:
(The talk was not meant for me).
Daguerreotypes shone. The back log sizzled
And my grandmother traced the family tree.
Then she swept to the proverbs of Campbell again.
And we glanced at the portrait of that most benign of men
Looking down through the evening gleam
With a bit of Andrew Jackson's air,
More of Henry Clay
And the statesmen of Thomas Jefferson's day:
With the face of age,
And the flush of youth,
And that air of going on, forever free.

For once upon a time ...
Long, long ago ...
In the holy forest land
There was a jolly pre-millennial band,
When that text-armed apostle, Alexander Campbell
Held deathless debate with the wicked “infi-del.”
The clearing was a picnic ground.

356

Squirrels were barking.
The seventeen-year locust charged by.
Wild turkeys perched on high.
And millions of wild pigeons
Broke the limbs of trees,
Then shut out the sun, as they swept on their way.
But ah, the wilder dove of God flew down
To bring a secret glory, and to stay,
With the proud hunter-trappers, patriarchs that came
To break bread together and to pray
And oh the music of each living throbbing thing
When Campbell arose,
A pillar of fire,
The great high priest of the Spring.

He stepped from out the Brush Run Meeting House
To make the big woods his cathedrals,
The river his baptismal font,
The rolling clouds his bells,
The storming skies his waterfalls,
His pastures and his wells.
Despite all sternness in his word
Richer grew the rushing blood
Within our father's coldest thought.
Imagination at the flood
Made flowery all they heard.
The deep communion cup
Of the whole South lifted up.

Who were the witnesses, the great cloud of witnesses
With which he was compassed around?
The heroes of faith from the days of Abraham
Stood on that blue-grass ground—
While the battle-ax of thought
Hewed to the bone

357

That the utmost generation
Till the world was set right
Might have an America their own.
For religion Dionysian
Was far from Campbell's doctrine.

He preached with faultless logic
An American Millennium:
The social order
Of a realist and farmer
With every neighbor
Within stone wall and border.
And the tongues of flame came down
Almost in spite of him.
And now all but that Pentecost is dim.

IV

I walk the forest by the Daniel Boone trail.
By guide posts quaint.
And the blazes are faint
In the rough old bark
Of silver poplars
And elms once slim,
Now monoliths tall.
I walk the aisle,
The cathedral hall
That is haunted still
With chariots dim,
Whispering still
With debate and call.

I come to you from Campbell,
Turn again, prodigal

358

Haunted by his name!
Artist, singer, builder,
The forest's son or daughter!
You, the blasphemer
Will yet know repentance,
And Campbell old and gray
Will lead you to the dream-side
Of a pennyroyal river.
While your proud heart is shaken
Your confession will be taken
And your sins baptized away.

You, statesman-philosopher,
Sage with high conceit
Who speak of revolutions, in long words,
And guide the little world as best you may:
I come to you from Campbell
And say he rides your way
And will wait with you the coming of his day.
His horse still threads the forest,
Though the storm be roaring down. ...
Campbell enters now your log-house door.
Indeed you make him welcome, after many years,
While the children build cob-houses on the floor.

Let a thousand prophets have their due.
Let each have his boat in the sky.
But you were born for his secular millennium
With the old Kentucky forest blooming like Heaven,
And the redbirds flying high.