University of Virginia Library

PREFACE TO “BOB TAYLOR'S BIRTHDAY”

A Poem on “The Tennessee Orpheus”

Robert Love Taylor, the twenty-seventh and thirtieth governor of Tennessee, was born in 1850, and died in 1912. He was the greatest State governor America has ever had, to me, a great statesman, indeed. This oration is dedicated to the boys and girls of Tennessee. It is intended to be read to a big crowd, out of doors, presumably July 1, Bob Taylor's birthday. If it is read while you sit down, in the house, it means nothing. Please, citizens of Tennessee, and others, assemble a concourse of neighbors with the children at a basket-picnic, on the Mississippi, the Tennessee, the Clinch or the Cumberland rivers, and read it so they all can hear, preferably after it is memorized, and every cadence adjusted and understood, as though they were all syllables of one musical word. After this kind of memorizing, it may be read slowly, as an oration, but not before. At natural intervals in the song, when finally given, let there be good tunes by a good picnic fiddler;—an old-fashioned, barn-dance, log cabin jig fiddler. At the proper moments solemn tunes, like “Old Hundred,” and famous dances like “Money-Musk!” Then, after a moment's pause, let the orator resume, paraphrasing and improving on the poem, as he gets the swing. Please let the production be understood by the crowd as oratorical, to be cheerfully filled with local allusions, in the spirit of Taylor's own political speeches, and improvisations on his own fiddle.

We are so choked by the old arts. We need to improvise,

but in the opposite of jazz. Watch Taylor again in fancy, running for governor against his brother, in that famous good-humored campaign, with the Democrats under Bob, using the white rose of York as their emblem, and the Republicans, under Alfred, the red rose of Lancaster, the boys fiddling on the big pine platform draped with flags and bunting. Think of the days when red or white roses were worn by every soul of Tennessee. Those were the days of improvisation.

So this is likewise, of all my productions, the one least intended for cold print. I urge all my friends to amend it as they read it. It is only in this way one can get much out of Bob Taylor's most famous oration—the basis of this poem:—Taylor's own reminiscent “lecture,” “The Fiddle and the Bow,” delivered from every Chautauqua platform in the United States and printed in his collected works: “The Lectures and Best Literary Productions of Bob Taylor,” The Boy Taylor Publishing Co., Nashville, Tenn.

“Practical” people hated Orpheus, Homer, Milton.

Taylor is the livest and greatest new legend in America. As to his charms for “practical” people, I have no doubt some of them foam as they read this. How bankers do hate a poet in office! As to Taylor's actual appearance, mannerisms and quality, I refer you to Taylor's book, the very adequate pictures therein, and several charming school histories of Tennessee, where the tale is told as marvelously as one in any Gilbert and Sullivan libretto. But to this is added an inventive and epic earnestness that is a tremendous sane prophecy for American domestic art and religion and power. Ask the Chautauqua man who met him in his very last days, when he became a national figure in that fashion, and any veteran senator, who met him in Washington, when he became a national figure in that fashion (presumably the supreme fashion). The element hardest to record is the village apocalypse quality, this inventive, epic earnestness.

Some of us are beginning to see him the livest and greatest new prophet in America, an unconscious prophet, far closer to the future than Whitman, because actually elected to office again and again. Whitman was a thwarted Tammany brave.

My friend Frank Waller Allen, of Los Angeles, a man of great Chatauqua experience, has talked to me about Taylor at great length, the last few years. And I remember one very pleasant evening with Bishop Gailor of Memphis, and the poet Will Percy, talking about Bob Taylor. This summer while visiting a charming Tennessee county seat, I carried the manuscript of this poem with me, and I heard much gossip of Taylor from fellow-politicians who helped him toward the governor's chair. The ideal aspects of a fiddling governor took stronger hold of me. They are now, frankly, the main theme of this song, the ideal aspects of the conception of a Fiddling Governor of a state of this Union. We certainly have had enough of utterly sordid “practical” governors, of late. The more Frank Waller Allen tells me about Taylor, the more I feel that the Taylor ideal is a gigantic piece of democratic genius and initiative and, for that mere initiative, that costs so much in vitality—the everlasting glory of his state. Tennessee, and the Union, should, in the end, be held tranced by the ideal. It is as though Tennessee said to the world: “You have business managers. But we have an Orpheus. Unless you also get the immortal soul of a musician, as a governor to rule you, we have put you everlastingly in the wrong. Your business-managers seem to be going to jail, fast.” As I read in a Tennessee school-history, a mere primer, the outline of the pretty story, I see the beautiful children of Tennessee huddled together, listening entranced, being made over into artists, poets, musicians, architects. Then I see all the children of America being made over into these, and into statesmen, prophets, saints and sibyls, tranced and listening to “Money-Musk,” and looking up at a gigantic figure of Bob Taylor in a great blue rocking-chair in the sky.

Now get the map of Tennessee, and look at the eastern counties. I was begging in East Tennessee, in the log-cabin region about which Taylor was always so eloquent, only a short journey from his ancestral mansion. I was between Flagpond and Greenville. I offered “The Tree of Laughing Bells” pamphlet, in exchange for a night's lodging to a man on the porch of a log cabin, just the sort of cabin Taylor pictured in his orations. The man on the porch welcomed me that night in the name of Tennessee's Fiddling Governor. It was the first time I had heard of Taylor. But it was like coming to the edge of a new, tremendous, eternal tradition. This was about 1905. Taylor had been Governor 1887 to 1891 and 1897 to 1899. In that time he had made himself a part of the soul-fabric of the American people, like Johnny Appleseed and, and—Roosevelt and such diverse dreamers! Death and time were no more, and a day was as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. I had come for eternity beneath the wing of Orpheus. It was there or near there I wrote the Canticle of the Tennessee Rose, which is in “A Handy Guide for Beggars,” page 109. The story of “Lady Iron Heels” is an adventure in the same region.

Bob Taylor is worth reading after. He could teach any man in the world, who would learn how to rule. Here is a quotation from his famous lecture, “The Fiddle and Bow”:

“It would be difficult for those reared amid the elegancies and refinements of life in city and town to appreciate the enjoyments of the gatherings and merrymakings of the great masses of the people who live in the rural districts of our country. The historian records the deeds of the great; he consigns to fame the favored few but leaves unwritten the ‘short and simple annals of the poor,’ the lives and actions of the millions. The modern millionaire, as he sweeps through our valleys and around our hills in his palace car, ought not to look with derision on the cabins of America,

for from their thresholds have come more brains, and courage, and true greatness than ever emanated from all the palaces in this world. The fiddle, the rifle, the ax and the Bible, the palladium of American liberty, symbolizing music, prowess, labor, and free religion, the four grand forces of our civilization, were the trusty friends and faithful allies of our pioneer ancestry in subduing the wilderness and erecting the great commonwealths of the Republic. Wherever a son of freedom pushed his perilous way into the savage wilds and erected his log cabin, these were the cherished penates of his humble domicile—the rifle in the rack above the door, the ax in the corner, the Bible on the table, and the fiddle, with its streamers of ribbon, hanging on the wall. Did he need the charm of music to cheer his heart, to scatter sunshine and drive away melancholy thoughts? He touched the responsive strings of his fiddle and it burst into laughter. Was he beset by skulking savages or prowling beasts of prey? He rushed to his deadly rifle for protection and relief. Had he the forest to fell and the fields to clear? His trusty ax was in his stalwart grasp. Did he need the consolation, the promises and precepts of religion to strengthen his faith, to brighten his hope and to anchor his soul to God and heaven? He held sweet communion with the dear old Bible.

“The glory and strength of the Republic to-day are its plain working people.”

I like this better than Whitman's “Song of the Broad Ax” or “I Hear America Singing.” It is far nearer democracy, though much farther from the grand style. But it seems to me it will take only one more generation to lift the memory of lives like Taylor's into the real American art. It is nearer to the true beginning.

Bob Taylor could teach any man in the world who would learn how to rule. He had no “Bread and Circuses” to bribe the crowd, after the manner of the Roman demagogues who purchased the votes of the Republic. But between fiddlings,

on a thousand platforms, he told stories like this, to people who came a hundred miles afoot to hear him:

“The sugar was boiling in the kettles, and while it boiled the boys and girls played ‘snap,’ and ‘eleven hand,’ and ‘thimble,’ and ‘blindfold,’ and another old play which some of our older people will remember—

‘Oh, Sister Phoebe, how merry were we
When we sat under the juniper tree,
The juniper tree Hi O.’

“And when the sugar had boiled down into candy they emptied it into greased saucers, or, as the mountain folks called them, ‘greased sassers,’ and set it out to cool; and when it had cooled each boy and girl took a saucer and they pulled the taffy out and patted it and rolled it till it hung well together, and then they pulled it out a foot long; they pulled it out a yard long, and they doubled it back, and pulled it out, and looped it over, and pulled it out, and when it began to look like gold the sweethearts paired off and consolidated their taffy and pulled against each other. They pulled it out, and doubled it back, and looped it over, and pulled it out; and sometimes a peachblow cheek touched a bronzed one and sometimes a sweet little voice spluttered out, ‘You, Jack,’ and there was a suspicious smack like a cow pulling her foot out of stiff mud. They pulled the candy and laughed and frolicked; the girls got taffy on their hair, the boys got taffy on their chins, the girls got taffy on their waists, the boys got taffy on their coat sleeves. They pulled it till it was as bright as a moonbeam and then they plaited it and coiled it into fantastic shapes and set it out in the crisp air to cool. Then the courting began in earnest. They did not court then as the young folks court now. The young man led his sweetheart back into a dark corner and sat down by her, and held

her hand for an hour and never said a word. But it resulted next year in more cabins on the hillsides and in the hollows, and in the years that followed the cabins were full of candy-haired children who grew up into a race of the best, the bravest, and the noblest people the sun in heaven ever shone upon.

“In the bright, bright hereafter, when all the joys of all the ages are gathered up and condensed into globules of transcendent ecstasy, I doubt whether there will be anything half so sweet as were the candy-smeared, ruby lips of the country maidens to the jeans-jacketed swains who tasted them at the candy-pulling in the happy long ago.”

This was finally crystallized in his formal lecture, “The Fiddle and Bow,” into the above form, but not until told a thousand ways a thousand times to a thousand stump-speech audiences.

To tell such stories well is one of what Mr. Gilbert Sedles calls “The Seven Lively Arts.”

Bob Taylor could teach any man in the world who would learn how to rule.

This “word-painting,” just below, was doubtless the final climax of many a stump-speech, and amid the dancing, the devilled eggs and fried chicken, was an outdoor tribute to the abstract qualities of the most abstract art.

“The spirit of music, like an archangel, presides over mankind and the visible creation. Her afflatus, divinely sweet, divinely powerful, is breathed on every human heart, and inspires every soul to some nobler sentiment, some higher thought, some greater action.

“O music! Sweetest, sublimest ideal of omniscience—

first-born of God—fairest and loftiest seraph of the celestial hierarchy, muse of the beautiful—daughter of the Universe!

“In the morning of eternity, when the stars were young, her first grand oratorio burst upon raptured Deity and thrilled the wondering angels. All heaven shouted. Ten thousand times ten thousand jeweled harps, ten thousand times ten thousand angel tongues caught up the song, and ever since, through all the golden cycles, its breathing melodies, old as eternity yet ever new as the flitting hours, have floated on the air of heaven, lingering like the incense of its flowers on plumed hill and shining vale, empurpled in the shadow of the eternal throne.

“The seraph stood with outstretched wings on the horizon of heaven clothed in light, ablaze with gems and, with voice attuned, swept her burning harpstrings, and lo, the blue infinite thrilled with her sweetest note. The trembling stars heard it and flashed their joy from every flaming center. The wheeling orbs that course the crystal paths of space were vibrant with the strain and pealed it back into the glad ear of God. The far-off milky way, bright gulf stream of astral glories, spanning the ethereal deep, resounded with its harmonies, and the star-dust isles, floating in that river of opal, reëchoed the happy chorus from every sparking strand.”

This is what the old Southern orators used to call “sky-painting oratory.” It is indeed that, we confess, and deny it not.

Read indoors, this quotation is a bit flowery. But, of course, every one hundred per cent American believes in democracy. Let the reader take it to a county fair, mount the nearest box, wave his hand and read it in competition with every Cracker-Jack seller on the place. Or just read it to himself in that setting. He will suddenly discover it taking on great dignity and proportions.

I have tried to write my tribute to Bob Taylor in the spirit of these three quotations. Try the above quotation in front of the grand stand, between horse races, or imagine yourself doing so. Then try my own piece of “sky-painting oratory” given below. I have tried to add a bit more of the pioneer Tennessee County Fair point of view. The third quotation above moves in the other direction. It is a great democratic way of saying that art has some mysterious abstract occult qualities. It is the outdoor or “log-cabin” way of reiterating the dogmas of Walter Pater. I have tried to consider its meaning.

In his school of “The Fiddle and Bow,”
He could teach every man in the world,
Who would learn how to rule.
His was no gladiatorial show,
By tears and kindness he ruled his democracy,
With never a wall flower, never an enemy.
With one bold fiddle, with a heart never cool,
Loving them all, serving them all,
Playing old tunes that conquered them all,
He brought his whole state to one violin school,
He brought his whole marvelling crowd
To one beautiful school.
On his birthday, he teaches his state to flower!
Unabashed orator, dropping his pearls!
To-day, he is shaking the butterflies' thrones!
Orpheus stirs up the squirrels to be barking;
Bee-hives are ringing their phones,
Wasps their razors are honing.
Good wheat ripens, and whistles and drones,
Cotton fields fiddle a tune to the sun,
Cornstalks rustle tassels and ears,
Spiders whirl round with misgivings and fears.
Bob Taylor is teaching his crowd to flower,
Shaking the butterflies' thrones!
There are pinch-faced people that snarl and deride,
For a singer trimphant defiles their pride.
Where are the hearts born to power,
My darlings,
Where are the hearts born to power?
You boys and girls
With the frolicsome manner,
From the first and second and third and fourth reader!
Will you lift your conquering Tennessee banner?
Oh, children, born of McGuffey's old reader,
With your new little brothers and sisters,
Will you heed the prophecies,
Mellow and rare,
Of the governing fiddle of Governor Taylor,
As he rocks in his blue rocking-chair,
As he rocks in his blue rocking-chair?
Oh, his giant chair of sky and dreams
Of the Great Smoky Mountains and East County Streams,
Tennessee clover and Tennessee rain,
Mixed with natural laughter and pain,
While Taylor's birthday comes 'round, comes 'round,
As he rocks in his blue rocking-chair, my darlings,
As he rocks in his blue rocking-chair!
As he lends a new splendor to log-cabin hearthstones,
Till the oceans reëcho his violin tones,
Oh, where are the hearts born to power,
My darlings,
Oh, where are the hearts born to power?
Who has the wings of the eagle?
Who has the wings of the lark?
Who has the wings of the owlet
As he dives through the twilight and dark?
Who will fly in dance time, in the springtime,
To the Money-Musk of Governor Bob,
As he shouts the new war cry of spring at its height,
And his fiddle gives forth a sweet sob?
As he sits on a cloud in the moonlight,
As he shakes up the world and its bones,
As he shakes up the nations that lie in their ashes,
And his bow sweeps the stars and the zones, my darlings,
And his bow sweeps the poles and the zones?
There are pinch-faced people that snarl and deride,
For a singer triumphant defiles their pride.
But now let us go to each county seat,
Where the old county fairs make the harvest complete,
And friend meets friend with pride.
In the merry-go-round where we will ride
To the music of the far stars' hum,
And the music of the hearth-crickets' drum,
And the tunes of Governor Bob, that will never end,
In the merry-go-round that we will make,
Many queer things we will undertake,
While the children will break ambrosial cake,
Bears will bring us honey-bread,
And the turkeys bring us honey-bread.
In the merry-go-round that we will make,
The cricket will chirp, the bee will hum,
The cricket will chirp, the bee will hum,
While the spokes of the merry-go-round go round.
A world-wide merry-go-round we will make,
With a tall elm tree for the central stake,
(While the spokes of the merry-go-round go round!)
The lark will cry the world awake,
The lark will cry the world awake.
Kind hearts will cry the world awake.
And now let us tell just the same child story—
In other terms, and with other glory.
While to-day's young children group around us, clap their pudgy hands,
And tell each other tales of beasts of distant lands,
And tell each other stories of sheiks and desert sands,
While they rock in big Grand Rapids chairs, varnished hard and slick,
Let flames of his birthday fiddle, coming nearer, make them quiver,
Let flames of the Governor's fiddle
Light each spirit's candlewick.
Let there be repeated visions
Of this man in every cabin,
The statesman, the soul's visitor, the mystical vote getter.
Now, just before Taylor finds “you and me,
Behold a young fairy called Tennessee,”
Come to set souls free.
She stands on the nation's hearthstones,
In the homes of millions, debating—
And there for the presence of Taylor waiting,
And chattering there with our tiniest children
As they watch for our man at the window sills,
Stories of hunters and trappers relating,
Martha Washington parties, and Jackson quadrilles.
She is crowned with three burning Tennessee stars,
Her soul is Jackson and Taylor and Boone,
The white far-flaming soul of the West,
For Tennessee once was the world's Wild West,
And is still, in secret, the world's Wild West.
With the eyes of the dawn and the gesture of pride,
And a fairy's heart in her childish side,
A heart for magic—a heart for music,
A heart that will not be denied.
Now Taylor's birthday comes 'round, comes 'round.
He is rocking now, and swaying, and playing,
In this, the millennial hour.
And his fiddle, speaking with tongues, keeps saying,
“Behold, the young beauty, called: ‘Tennessee.’”
Obeying the fiddler's merry command,
Tennessee,
In the shining form of a child,
Holds out her white hand.
Then a village Apocalypse indeed!
Taylor's news films of the future,
His merry Orphic games for his every dreaming creature,
Set to the Dixie tunes of “Kingdom Come,”
Tunes for stubborn souls,
No longer blind or dumb.
Threads of incense,
Then log cabins come,
Then Red Indian council halls,
Toys of the past,
Tossed up through the sky's blue walls,
And then,
From the white palm there,
Those toys, and those threads of smoke, become the world's World's Fair,
That floats, to merry robin notes,
And goes up, in shining power and authority and worth,
Till there a university of man's whole soul has birth,
From old McGuffey's reader style,
From toy-shop style, and play-room style, and baby Christmas mirth,
Spreading in terrible splendor, conquering the sad earth,
Spreading out like a Maytime field,
Coming down like an angel's misty shield,
A fair of the secret spirit, of the proud heart's comforter!
From the fairy comes a cry:
From the strange child comes a cry:
“Our pride is eternal, a tree no worm can kill—
It is older than the old oak trees, deathless like the sky.”
And we go with the dream World's Fair,
We walk on its strange wide streets—
And the nation is the child and the child is the nation,
With pride in noble toys—
With the same firm, quick heartbeats—
Old toys grown great, now built anew—
Hilltop sunrise battlements set against the blue—
Set in cloudy streets of giant blue-ridge pines,
Where every kind of dewy flower vine shines.
And yet some childish towers have great pink ribbon bows,
And big bisque dolls,
And Indian dolls
Hold up some mighty roofs in pillared rows.
And jewelled city flags wave high,
And toy-shop mayors bow the knee
To those flags, unstained and wildflower sweet,
And the pouring crowds, set free.
Yet the fiddle cries in majesty of our nation's good and ill,
Great brains work greatly, with a will,
And the trees of pride no worm can kill
Grow stronger still.
While some wireless from Aldeberan
Rolls down from on high—
How democracy has swept the farthest stars—
Broken up Aldeberan's prison bars,
And the shout shakes and thrills
The nation's new-born, dream-born toy,
The Tinselled Oak Tree, priest of Truth,
And the new-born, dream-born toy,
Tinselled Mulberry, priest of Youth,
And the new-born, dream-born toy,
The Amaranth-Apple Tree,
White as the foam of the jasper-sea,
Priest of the Holy Spirit's grace.
And the new-born Golden-Rain-Tree,
Tinselled priest, at our honeyed feast,
Priest of the future Human race,
On our soul-paths set with fantasy,
Where the children of our hearthstones
Find the proud toys of democracy,
Find Majesty and Alchemy,
While Orpheus plays his fiddle there.
And look, there are Maypoles in a row,
And baskets pouring out strange flowers
For all the crowds that pass,
And tiny fairy Maypoles
And roller-skating rinks,
For all the squealing infant class,
In the nation that shall be,
Beginning with this lover—
Of innocent small children,
Beginning with this fiddler
And his fairy Tennessee—
On the borders of our prairies,
Our Middle-Western sea.
And our highest art will come in this Hereafter.
And in all the parks so gay
Sad young Shellys, learning laughter,
Amid High-school yells, and college yells, and adventure yells,
Weird Confederate yells, weird Union yells,
In scandalous music, whispered, hissing, drumming,
While above the skylark flying machines
Of all man's future humming!
Playthings of the fancies of young Shellys that shall be,
And their little brothers and sisters,
And the pouring crowds set free,
By the conqueror of death—
By the great Orpheus fiddler, and his fairy Tennessee.
Oh, the pinch-faced people still think we are drunk,
With this pearl-dropping orator's fair,
With this sky-painting orator's fair.
They call it “the old Buncombe county bunk,”
Deriding our village Apocalypse there,
Our old Happy Valley fair,
Turned to a world's World's Fair,
Though there are the glories of all creation,
Thoughts, from every ultimate nation,
Though the birds and the beasts are there—
Changed from the whimsies of first creation,
To things majestic from Revelation:—
Still, the pinch-faced people think we are drunk,
Curse us, and think we are drunk.
And now let us tell just the same child story—
In other terms, and with other glory.
Obeying the fiddler's command.
Tennessee in the shining form of a child
Holds out her white hand.
From her magic palm, strange doll books come,
Toys tossed up through the wide sky's walls,
They turn to boys' “dime libraries,”
They turn to girls' doll whimsies,
Snark-hunting paper flimsies,
They turn to children's Christmas books,
Alice-in-Wonderland looking-glass books,
And Pilgrim's Progress allegory books,
Singing bolder words as their leaves spread more and more
And up into the sky the flocks of beauty pour—
The flags of imagination on the page of the soul's sky,
Each gorgeous new day's print goes by.
And as the full years sweep along
Each old man reads his patriarch tome,
In the light of his dear hearth home,
And each child follows his new toy book
Though it flies across the world,
For always it returns
To his home-town hearthstone towers and bowers,
And childhood's wildflower banners unfurled.
So, each child keeps his soul alone,
As he keeps his ballot still his own,
True to the stars that gave him birth—
And the dreams he found in the wide earth—
To the Orpheus, to the fiddler and his fairy Tennessee,
And the pouring crowds, set free.
The night rolls 'round, stars light the land.
Obeying the fiddler's command,
Tennessee in the shining form of a child
Holds out her white hand.
And now let us tell just the same child story,
In other terms, and with other glory.
Now, hear the cry of all the nations,
Hear the cry of the generations,
Egypt to Utopia,
The hieroglyphic parallel written on the sky—
Following all the way—
The cry of the sun by day,
The cry of the stars by night,
The cry of the deep, deep earth,
The cry of the deep, deep earth.
She holds out her white hand—
From the incense, from the fairy palm,
From the wild cry in the air
White temples and pavilions there
From Adam's day to Kingdom Come,
Tossed up through the great sky's walls,
Petals before a humming wind,
And we watch them spread their delicate eaves
Amid quivering leaves—
Altars—then cathedrals,
Go up in long progression,
Growing greater,
Killing the gloom,
Till we see the white procession
All future forms of holy faith
Stand still and take possession
Of our nation that shall be,
Tremendous white Cathedral ships,
On our Middle-Western Sea,
Whose waves are fields of cotton, corn and wheat,
Orchard paths and boulevards
And pouring crowds, set free,
By the Orpheus, the fiddler, the conqueror of Death,
And his fairy, Tennessee.
And now let us tell just the same child story,
In other terms, and with other glory.
Oh, where are the child souls,
With the singers' pride,
Who will wake, refusing defeat and death,
Returning perpetually from the grave,
Generation on generation?
Where are the furious wills of the nation?
Oh, where are the hearts born to power?
“Oh, who is there among us, the true and the tried,
Who will stand by his colors, who is on the Lord's side?”
Who will rise each century, shout once again,
Who will wake in hot faith
With our cavalcade ride?
Send up their American souls from the grave,
And go forth in glory, aspiring,
Breathing springtime breath and noonday fire,
Armed with doll beauty perilous,
Armed with child glory marvellous,
Armed with Southern poems delirious,
Armed with grass daggers
They found in the ground,
Armed with old shields they dug up in the sky,
By the Archangel Mountains high—
Armed with long swords like the young crescent moon—
Oh, who is there among us, the true and the tried,
Who will ride against Death and his endless cruelty,
However his legions conspire?
Who will ride against all grown-up foes of Democracy?
“To-morrow, to-morrow,” their marvelous tune—
“To-morrow,” their marvelous cry of desire—
Going forth with pouring armies
Of the deathless young and gay,
Driving Death forever from the way.
Yes, who will sing in the follies of Heaven
To the Taylor-born Tennessee tune?
Who will follow the child Tennessee
Armed with soul-swords like the young crescent moon?
Who will follow her through the twilight,
Or in the morning, by the bright light,
Armed by her music, shouting her fame,
As she rides down the future with her boys all white flame,
As she rides down the future with her girls all white fire?
Just in time to stop the charges
Of Death and all his hosts
That turn at last to beaten ghost.
As she shouts down a thousand long years, my darlings,
Magic to-morrow the best of her tune,
Magic to-morrow her cry of desire. ...
Her troops dressed in white for the spirits' delight,
She will stand in her stirrups a Torch of White Light,
The fairy child, Tennessee,
The soul of us, hope of us, helper and tyrant,
On her Pegasus horse of thunder and snow,
'Round the merry-go-round she will go.
We dream we will make a merry-go-round,
While Taylor's birthday comes 'round, comes 'round,
A beautiful toy while the daisies laugh—
A picnic place for Taylor's sake
And his lovers, and little brothers and sisters. ...
We dream we will build a merry-go-round.
Whose root is a flame in the ancient ground,
Whose flagpole is a tree to the sky,
A merry-go-round ten centuries high.
In the merry-go-round that we will make—
Of these Dixie thoughts of Kingdom Come,
In the merry-go-round that we will make—
The cricket will chirp, the bee will hum,
The cricket will chirp, the bee will hum,
The lark will cry the world awake,
Governor Taylor will govern the song,
Ten centuries will sweep along—
And the prairies and mountains will whirl around,
The prairies will whirl around, around.
In the merry-go-round that we will make—
The lark will cry the world awake,
Kind hearts will cry the world awake.
Toys will be men, dolls will be men,
And our sages and saints good dolls again.
Each painted reindeer will be a chum.
Not a single dingo or dog will be dumb.
And the horses will not be horses of wood,
Nor iron nor ivory, nor jewel nor jade,
Not hobby-horses whose paint will fade,
But Pegasus ponies on parade,
But Pegasus ponies on parade,
Whose hoofs are of ice, and whose wings are of fire.
White horses of Hope and the Spirit's desire,
White horses of Hope and the Spirit's desire—
On our horses of fire and thunder and snow
'Round the merry-go-round we will go,
'Round the merry-go-round we will go.