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*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems,
by Vachel Lindsay.
[Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Illinois Poet. 1879-1931.]
[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases capitalized.
Italicized
stanzas are indented 5 spaces. Some errors have been corrected. Lines
longer than 78 characters are broken according to metre, and the
continuation is indented two spaces.]
The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems
By Vachel Lindsay
Author of "The Congo", "General William Booth
Enters Into Heaven", "Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of
Beauty", etc.
This Book is Dedicated to Sara Teasdale, Poet
Harriet Monroe awarded the Levinson Prize to "The Chinese
Nightingale", as the best contribution to "Poetry: A Magazine of Verse",
for the year 1915.
Table of Contents
First Section
The Chinese Nightingale
Second Section
America Watching the War, August, 1914, to April,
1917
Where Is the Real Non-resistant?
Here's to the Mice!
When Bryan
Speaks
To Jane Addams at the Hague
I. Speak Now for Peace
II. Tolstoi Is Plowing Yet
The Tale of the
Tiger Tree
The Merciful Hand

Third Section
America at War with Germany, Beginning April, 1917
Our Mother Pocahontas
Concerning Emperors
Niagara
Mark
Twain and Joan of Arc
The Bankrupt Peace Maker
"This, My Song,
is made for Kerensky"
Fourth Section
Tragedies, Comedies, and Dreams
Our Guardian Angels and Their Children
Epitaphs for Two Players
I. Edwin Booth
II. John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian
Mae
Marsh, Motion Picture Actress
Two Old Crows
The Drunkard's
Funeral
The Raft
The Ghosts of the Buffaloes
The Broncho that
Would Not Be Broken
The Prairie Battlements
The Flower of
Mending
Alone in the Wind, on the Prairie
To Lady Jane
How I
Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven
Fifth Section
The Poem Games
An Account of the Poem Games
The King of Yellow Butterflies

The Potatoes' Dance
The Booker Washington Trilogy
I. Simon Legree
II. John Brown
III. King Solomon and the Queen
of Sheba
How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza
The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems
First Section
The Chinese Nightingale
A Song in Chinese Tapestries
"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,
"San Francisco sleeps
as the dead --
Ended license, lust and play:
Why do you iron the
night away?
Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
With a tick

and a wail till dawn comes round.
While the monster shadows glower
and creep,
What can be better for man than sleep?"
"I will tell you a secret," Chang replied;
"My breast with vision is
satisfied,
And I see green trees and fluttering wings,
And my
deathless bird from Shanghai sings."
Then he lit five fire-crackers in
a pan.
"Pop, pop," said the fire-crackers, "cra-cra-crack."
He lit a
joss stick long and black.
Then the proud gray joss in the corner
stirred;
On his wrist appeared a gray small bird,
And this was the
song of the gray small bird:
"Where is the princess, loved forever,

Who made Chang first of the kings of men?"
And the joss in the corner stirred again;
And the carved dog, curled in
his arms, awoke,
Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke.

It piled in a maze round the ironing-place,
And there on the snowy
table wide
Stood a Chinese lady of high degree,
With a scornful,
witching, tea-rose face. . . .
Yet she put away all form and pride,

And laid her glimmering veil aside
With a childlike smile for Chang
and for me.
The walls fell back, night was aflower,
The table gleamed in a
moonlit bower,
While Chang, with a countenance carved of stone,

Ironed and ironed, all alone.
And thus she sang to the busy man
Chang:
"Have you forgotten. . . .
Deep in the ages, long, long ago,

I was your sweetheart, there on the sand --
Storm-worn beach of
the Chinese land?
We sold our grain in the peacock town
Built on
the edge of the sea-sands brown --
Built on the edge of the sea-sands
brown. . . .
"When all the world was drinking blood
From the skulls of men and
bulls
And all the world had swords and clubs of stone,
We drank
our tea in China beneath the sacred spice-trees,
And heard the curled
waves of the harbor moan.
And this gray bird, in Love's first spring,


With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing,
Captured

the world with his carolling.
Do you remember, ages after,
At last
the world we were born to own?
You were the heir of the yellow
throne --
The world was the field of the Chinese man
And we were
the pride of the Sons of Han?
We copied deep books and we carved
in jade,
And wove blue silks in the mulberry shade. . . ."
"I remember, I remember
That Spring came on forever,
That Spring
came on forever,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.
My heart was filled with marvel and dream,
Though I saw the
western street-lamps gleam,
Though dawn was bringing the western
day,
Though Chang was a laundryman ironing away. . . .
Mingled
there with the streets and alleys,
The railroad-yard and the
clock-tower bright,
Demon clouds crossed ancient valleys;
Across
wide lotus-ponds