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

(A most informal chant, being a rhymed commentary on the preface, “Adventures While Singing These Songs,” pages 8 and 14, especially the reference to the Red Indian ancestor. To this to be added a tradition that one branch of my mother's family came of the Don Ivans, of Spain.)

I
Being a Seven-Year-Old Boy's Elaborate Memory of the Day of His Birth

In through the window a sea-mustang brought me,

The poem to be read with the greatest possible speed, imitating the galloping of a sea-mustang, each time faster till it is so memorized, all the reptends musically blended, almost as though the poem were one long word, then of course, read very slowly.

(Smashing the window sash, breaking the law).
I was tied to his back—I do not know who caught me.

Up from Biloxi, up the great Mississippi,
Through the swamps, through the thaw, through the rains that grew raw,
On the tenth of November (the hail storm was nippy).
Up the slow, muddy Sangamon River—
(While we heard the towns cough and we heard the farms shiver),
The high wave rolled on. We heard a crow squawk,
With a voice like a buzz saw, destroying the day:
“Caw, caw, you are rolling to meet the tall Mohawk,

437

He will burn you to ashes and turn you to clay,
You will burn like a scarecrow with fire in the straw,
You are rolling and whirling on to the Mohawk,
Caw, caw,
Caw, caw.”

We sighted and broke the high hedge of Oak Ridge,
We rolled through its tombs. We saw Incubi walk.
We leaped the snow mounds like a pack of bloodhounds.
Dead lawyers were shrieking: “You are breaking the law.”
We spoiled and howled down the shrill cemetery sounds,
Swept townward: a green wave, a foam wave, a moon wave,
Up the dawn streets of Springfield, high tide in a cave,
Up to Edwards and Fifth street, and broke every windowpane.
They thought we were “cyclone,” earthquake, and rain.
We smashed the front door. We ramped by the bed's head.
On the wall-paper pattern sea-roses bloomed red.

There, for a ceiling bent crab-thorn, hazel-brush,
Red-haw, black-haw,
(And the storm blew a horn,)
There fluttered a carrion crow that cried: “Caw!”
A scare-crow so queer, and a crow that cried: “Caw, Caw! Caw!”

II
Being my notion, as a Ferocious Small-Boy, of my Ancestral Protector.

The porpoise was grandma. The Mohawk was doctor:
“Heap-big-chief-the-Mohawk,” with eye like a tommyhawk:
Naked, in war-paint, tough stock and old stock,
Furious swash-buckler, street-brawler, world-breaker,

438

Plumed like an Indian, an American dragon,
Tall as Sun-mountain, long as the Sangamon,
With a buffalo beard, all beast, yet all human,
Sire of the Mexican king, Montezuma,
Of Quetzal the Fair God, and prince Guatomozin,
And that fated Peruvian, Atahualpa,
Of King Powhatan and his brown Pocahontas,
And of everything Indian serious or humorous,
Sire of the “Mohocks” who swept through old London,
(Too dirty for Swift and too wicked for Addison;)
He was carver of all the old Indian cigar-signs,
Chief of all the wild Kickapoo doctors,
And their log-cabin remedies known to our fathers,
Sire of St. Tammany, and sweet Hiawatha,
Tippecanoe, and Tyler Too,
He was named Joseph Smith, he was named Brigham Young,
He was named Susquehannah, he was named Mississippi,
Every river and State in the Indian Tongue,
Every park, every town that is still to be sung:—
Yosemite, Cheyenne, Niagara, Chicago!
The Pride of the U. S. A.:—that is the Mohawk,
The Blood of the U. S. A.:—that is the Mohawk,
He is tall as Sun-Mountain, long as the Sangamon,
Proud as Chicago, a dream like Chicago,
And I saw the wild Star-Spangled Banner unfurl
Above the tall Mohawk that no man can tame
Old son of the sun-fire, by many a name.

When nine, I would sing this yarn of the sea,
With ample embroidery I now must restrain
(Giving the facts and omitting the flowers)
It proved new fantastics were coming to me.
The Mohawk! the Mohawk! the Mohawk! the Mohawk!
Doctor and midwife! ancestral protector!
Breathed Mohawk fire through me, gave long claws to me,

439

Told my father and mother they must soon set me free,
Told the dears I had lived with a pearl in the billow
In the Mexican Gulf, in the depths of that sea,
For infinite years. Put the pearl by my pillow.
(It was new as that hour, and as old as the sea)—
The Soul of the U. S. A.—that was the pearl.
It became a white eagle I could not understand.
And I saw the carrion crow fly away.
And I saw the boughs open and the sun of that day,
And I saw the white eagle in the clouds fly and whirl
Then soar to the skies to a Star-Spangled Land.

And I cried, and held hard to my mother's warm hand.
And the Mohawk said:—“Red man, your first trial begins.”
And the Mohawk roared:—“Shame to you, coward and mourner!”
And the Great Chief was gone.

But my life was all planned.

I wept with my mother. I kissed and caressed her.
Then she taught me to sing. Then she taught me to play:—
The sibyl, the strange one, the white witch of May.
Creating diversion with slow-talk and long-talk,
She sang with girl-pride of her Spanish ancestor,
The mighty Don Ivan, Quixotic explorer:—
Friend of Columbus, Queen Isabel's friend,
Conquistador!
Great-great-great-grandfather.

I would cry and pressed close to her, all through the story
For the Mohawk was gone. And gone was my glory:—
Though that white-witch adored me, and fingered each curl,
Though I saw the wild Star-Spangled Banner unfurl,
Though a Spanish Ancestor makes excellent talk.

440

I was a baby, with nothing to say
But:—“The Mohawk, the Mohawk, the Mohawk, the Mohawk.”
And I knew for my pearl I must hunt this long way
Through deserts and dooms, and on till to-day.

I must see Time, the wild-cat, gorging his maw,
I must hear the death-cry of the deer he brought low,
And the cry of the blood on his pantherish paw,
And that carrion crow on his shoulder cry “Caw, Caw! Caw!”

III
One Brief Hour of Grown-up Glory on the Gulf of Mexico.

Far from the age of my Spanish ancestor,
Don Ivan the dreamer,
Friend of Columbus, and Isabel's friend,
Wherever I wander, beggar or guest,
The soul of the U. S. A.:—that is my life-quest.

Still I see the wild Star-Spangled Banner unfurl.

And at last near Biloxi, in glory and sport
I met Doctor Mohawk, while swimming this morning
Straight into the Gulf of Mexico Sun.
The Mohawk! the Mohawk! the Mohawk! the Mohawk!
From the half-risen sun, in the pathway of blood
Sea-roses swept round me, red-kissed of the flood.
And the flying fish whispered: “the First Trial is done.”

Magnificent mischief now was a-borning.
First: I dived and brought up the cool dream called “The Pearl.”

441

As far from the Mohawk as peace is from murder,
As far from the Mohawk as May from November,
As far from the Mohawk as love is from scorning,
As far from the Mohawk as snow is from fire.
Yet, the Mohawk arm lifted me out of that flood
(The blood of the U. S. A.—that is the Mohawk)
And he healed my sick heart where the thunder-winds hurl,
There in the fog, at the top of the sun
Cool were his foam-fins, majestic his graces,
Doctor, and glorious Ancestral Protector,
Exhorter, reprover, corrector.
Then we swam to the sky through crystalline spaces,
The clouds closed behind us, all the long way,
And a rainbow-storm priesthood that hour blessed the bay,
Medicine men, in tremendous array,
While he spoke to me kindly and yet with fine scorning
For hunting for favors with rabbits or men.
Breathed Mohawk fire through me, gave long claws to me
And told me to think of my birthday again:—
How the sun is a Mohawk, and our best ancestor:
I must run to him, climb to him, swim to him, fly to him,
And laugh like a sea-horse, or life will grow dim.
How only the Mohawks will call me their brother,
(We will flourish forever, breaking the law)
They are laughing through all of the lands and the oceans,
(And only great worlds make an Indian laugh)
They are singing and swimming their pranks and their notions
With poems, and splendid majestical motions,
And they will stand by me, and save and deliver,
With the pearl near my heart, they will love me forever,
An eagle, a girl, then a moon on the sand,
The bird of the U. S. A.—that is the darling—
Whirling and dancing, swimming with awe
In the light of the sun, in the infinite shining
Of the uncaptured future:—that is the darling.

442

The infinite future, that is the eagle,—
An eagle, a moon, a girl on the sand,
The Soul of the U. S. A.—that is the pearl,
Without flaw.

Note:—For the “Mohocks” read Gay's Trivia iii, 325; Spectator Nos. 324, 332, 347; Defoe's Review, March 15, 1712; Also Swift's Journal to Stella.