Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
The Moon is a Mirror—Twelve PoemsVachel Lindsay
Spoken by the Author in his own person
N
To make sweet song thereon,
With dandified importance,
His sense of humor gone.
The jester’s chastened mien,
If he would woo that looking-glass
And see what should be seen.
We find there what we bring;
So let us smile in honest part,
And deck our souls, and sing.
Will ghosts and terrors pass;
And fays, and merry friendly things
Throw kisses through the glass.
Where now the huts are empty,
Where never a camp-fire glows,
In an abandoned cañon
A gambler’s ghost arose.
Of dust.” His voice rose thin:
“I wish I knew the miner man;
I’d play, and play to win.
Of old, when stakes were high,
I held my own. Now I would play
For that sack in the sky.
’Twould rather be begun.
I’d bet my moon against His stars,
And gamble for the Sun.”
The moon’s a brazen water-keg,
A wondrous water-feast.
If I could climb the sands and drink
And give drink to my beast,
Would not be biting so,
My burning feet be spry again,
My mule no longer slow,
And reach my fatherland,
And not be food for ants and hawks,
And perish in the sand.
Two statesmen met by moonlight;
Their ease was partly feigned.
They glanced about the prairie,
Their faces were constrained.
They had misled the state,
Yet did it so politely
Their henchmen thought them great.
No word, but had a smoke.
A satchel passed from hand to hand …
Next day the deadlock broke.
What the Tired Reformer Said
The moon’s a perfect city, with
Curved walls encompassed round;
With yellow palaces upreared
Upon a glittering ground.
But on this splendid night,
When all the sky is shining clear,
When my whole heart is light,
My soul is there in mirth,
With golden-robed good-citizens,
Far from the dusty earth.
I love your doors and domes,
Your turrets and your palaces,
Your terraces, your homes.
What the Soldier Said
Oh, see the knight in armor,
Who keeps his visor down
And charges with a moon-beam spear
On hard hearts of the town;
A flowering, glimmering park,
Who pierces with a sharp-sweet dream
The crabbed minds and dark;
Their brooding heads bent down;
The knight whose scarcely-heeded strokes
Have cleansed and cleared the town!
Old Euclid drew a circle
On a sand-beach, long ago.
He bounded and enclosed it
With angles thus and so.
Nodded and argued much
Of arc and of circumference,
Diameter and such.
From morning until noon,
Because they drew such charming
Round pictures of the moon.
What the Carpenter Said to the Child
The moon’s a cottage with a door—
Some folk can see it plain.
Look! You may catch a glint of light
A-sparkle through the pane,
Showing the place is brighter still
Within, though bright without.
There at a cosy open fire
Strange babes are grouped about:
The children of the Wind and Tide,
The urchins of the sky,
Drying their wings from storms and things
So they again can fly.
What Grandpa Told the Children
The Moon? It is a griffin’s egg,
Hatching tomorrow night;
And how the little boys will watch
With shouting and delight
And creep across the sky.
The boys will laugh, the little girls,
I fear, may hide and cry.
Most decorous and fat;
And walk up to the milky way
And lap it like a cat.
The Moon’s a little prairie-dog.
He shivers through the night.
He sits upon his hill and cries
For fear that I will bite.
Like every other thing,
And trembles morning, noon and night
Lest I should spring and sting.
To be tied to a pebble and thrown through a palace window
The Moon’s a mirror where dim shades
Of queens are doomed to peer,
The beauteous queens that loved not love
Or faith or godly fear.
The night-wind makes their mirror grey.
The breath of Autumn drear,
And many mists of time and change
Have clouded it apace,
In mercy veiled it lest each queen
Too clearly see her face,
With long-past sins deep written there,
And ghostly rags she now must wear,
While slain men o’er her shoulders glare,
Leering at her disgrace.
What the Tramp Said
The old man had his box and wheel
For grinding knives and shears.
No doubt his bell in village streets
Was joy to children’s ears.
When such men came around,
And times I asked them in, quite sure
The scissors should be ground.
His face at last in view.
And then I thought those curious eyes
Were eyes that once I knew.
To whet the sword of God,”
He said, “and here beside my fire
I stretch upon the sod
And watch the ghost-clouds go,
And see the sword of God in Heaven
A-waving to and fro.
It means the world-war comes,
With all its bloody wicked chiefs
And hate-inflaming drums.
That emery-wheel turn round.
The voice of Abel cries again
To God from out the ground.
Go stark and screaming by,
Each time the sword of God takes edge
Within the midnight sky.
And sowed a wind of shame
Will reap the whirlwind as of old,
And face relentless flame.”
His face at last in view.
And there beside the railroad-bridge
I saw the Wandering Jew.
No poet spent with visions,
Bit by the City’s teeth,
Laughing at fortune, seeking
Fame and the singer’s wreath,
But must grow brave this evening,
Humming a wilder tune,
Armed against men and nations.
Why? He beholds the moon!