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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Vachel Lindsay

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Santa Fé Trail—A Humoresque

Vachel Lindsay

  • I asked the old negro, “What is that bird who sings so well?” He answered, “That is the Rachel-Jane.” “Hasn’t it another name—lark, or thrush, or the like?” “No, jes’ Rachel-Jane.”


  • I
    In which a racing auto comes from the east.

    This is the order of the music of the morning:To be sung or read delicately to an improvised tune

    First, from the far east comes but a crooning;

    The crooning turns to a sunrise singing—

    Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn;

    Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn….

    Hark to the pace-horn, chase-horn, race-horn!To be sung or read with great speed

    And the holy veil of the dawn has gone,

    Swiftly the brazen car comes on.

    It burns in the East as the sunrise burns—

    I see great flashes where the far trail turns:

    Its eyes are lamps, like the eyes of dragons;

    It drinks gasoline from big red flagons.

    Butting through the delicate mists of the morning,

    It comes like lightning, goes past roaring.

    It will hail all the wind-mills, taunting, ringing;

    Dodge the cyclones,

    Count the milestones,

    On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills,

    Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hills….

    Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn,

    Ho for the gay-horn, bark-horn, bay-horn!Deliberately in a rolling bass

    Ho for Kansas, land that restores us

    When houses choke us, and great books bore us!

    Sunrise Kansas, harvester’s Kansas—

    A million men have found you before us!

    II
    In which many autos pass westward.

    I want live things in their pride to remain.In a deliberate narrative manner

    I will not kill one grasshopper vain,

    Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door.

    I let him out, give him one chance more.

    Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim,

    Grasshopper lyrics occur to him.

    I am a tramp by the long trail’s border,

    Given to squalor, rags and disorder.

    I nap and amble and yawn and look,

    Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book;

    Recite to the children, explore at my ease,

    WORK when I work, beg when I please;

    Give crank drawings, that make folks stare,

    To the half-grown boys in the sunset-glare;

    And get me a place to sleep in the hay

    At the end of a live-and-let-live day.

    I find in the stubble of the new-cut weeds

    A whisper and a feasting, all one needs:

    The whisper of the strawberries, white and red,

    Here where the new-cut weeds lie dead.

    But I would not walk all alone till I die

    Without SOME life-drunk horns going by.

    Up round this apple-earth they come,

    Blasting the whispers of the morning dumb:

    Cars in a plain realistic row—

    And fair dreams fade, when the raw horns blow.

    On each snapping pennant

    A big black name—

    The careering city

    Whence each car came.

    They tour from Memphis, Atlanta, Savannah,Like a train caller in a railroad station

    Tallahassee and Texarkana.

    They tour from St. Louis, Columbus, Manistee;

    They tour from Peoria, Davenport, Kankakee.

    Cars from Concord, Niagara, Boston,

    Cars from Topeka, Emporia and Austin;

    Cars from Chicago, Hannibal, Cairo,

    Cars from Alton, Oswego, Toledo;

    Cars from Buffalo, Kokomo, Delphi.

    Cars from Lodi, Carmi, Loami.

    Ho for Kansas, land that restores us

    When houses choke us, and great books bore us!

    While I watch the highroad

    And look at the sky,

    While I watch the clouds in amazing grandeur

    Roll their legions without rain

    Over the blistering Kansas plain—

    While I sit by the milestone

    And watch the sky,

    The United States

    Goes by!

    Listen to the iron horns, ripping, racking—Harshly with a snapping explosiveness

    Listen to the quack horns, slack and clacking!

    Way down the road, trilling like a toad,

    Here comes the dice-horn, here comes the vice-horn,

    Here comes the snarl-horn, brawl-horn, lewd-horn,

    Followed by the prude-horn, bleak and squeaking.

    (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas!)

    Here comes the hod-horn, plod-horn, sod-horn,

    Nevermore-to-roam-horn, loam-horn, home-horn,

    (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas!)

    Far away the Rachel-Jane,To be read or sung well-nigh in a whisper

    Not defeated by the horns,

    Sings amid a hedge of thorns:

    “Love and life,

    Eternal youth

    Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet!

    Dew and glory,

    Love and truth

    Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet!”

    While smoke-black freights on the double-tracked railroad,Louder and faster

    Driven as though by the foul-fiend’s ox-goad,

    Screaming to the west coast, screaming to the east,

    Carry off a harvest, bring back a feast,

    Harvesting machinery and harness for the beast.

    The hand-cars whiz, and rattle on the rails;

    The sunlight flashes on the tin dinner-pails.In a rolling bass with increasing deliberation

    And then, in an instant,

    Ye modern men,

    Behold the procession once again!

    Listen to the iron horns, ripping, racking!With a snapping explosiveness

    Listen to the wise-horn, desperate-to-advise horn—

    Listen to the fast-horn, kill-horn, blast-horn….

    Far away the Rachel-Jane,To be sung or read well-nigh in a whisper

    Not defeated by the horns,

    Sings amid a hedge of thorns:

    “Love and life,

    Eternal youth

    Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet!

    Dew and glory,

    Love and truth

    Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet!”

    The mufflers open on a score of cars

    With wonderful thunder,

    CRACK, CRACK, CRACK,

    CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK,To be brawled with a snapping explosiveness ending in a languorous chant

    CRACK-CRACK-CRACK,….

    Listen to the gold-horn….

    Old-horn….

    Cold-horn….

    And all of the tunes, till the night comes down

    On hay-stack, and ant-hill, and wind-bitten town.

    Then far in the west, as in the beginning,To be sung to the same whispered tune as the first five lines

    Dim in the distance, sweet in retreating,

    Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn,

    Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn….

    They are hunting the goals that they understand—Beginning sonorously—ending in a languorous whisper

    San Francisco, and the brown sea-sand.

    My goal is the mystery the beggars win.

    I am caught in the web the night-winds spin.

    The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me;

    I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree.

    And now I hear, as I sit all alone

    In the dusk, by another big Santa-Fé stone,

    The souls of the tall corn gathering round,

    And the gay little souls of the grass in the ground.

    Listen to the tale the cotton-wood tells;

    Listen to the wind-mills singing o’er the wells.

    Listen to the whistling flutes without price

    Of myriad prophets out of Paradise….

    Hearken to the wonder that the night-air carries.The same cadenced whisper as the Rachel-Jane song

    Listen to the whisper

    Of the prairie fairies….

    Singing over the fairy plain:

    “Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet!

    Love and glory, stars and rain,

    Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet!”