Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty — John Shaqi
Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of BeautyLindsay, Vachel
General
Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty
Lindsay, Vachel
Lindsay, Vachel, 1879-1931 -- Travel -- United States; United States -- Description and travel; Walking -- United States
Sooner or later I am going to step up into the rarefied civilized air
once too often and stay there in spite of myself. I shall get a little
too fond of the china and old silver, and forget the fields. Books and
teacups and high-brow conversations are awfully insinuating things, if
you give them time to be. One gets along somehow, and pleasure
alternates with pain, and the sum is the joy of life, while one is
below. But to quit is like coming up to earth after deep-sea diving in
a heavy suit. One scarcely realizes he has been under heavier-than-air
pressure, and has been fighting off great forces, till he has taken
off his diving helmet, as it were. And yet there is a baffling sense
of futility in the restful upper air. I remember it once, long ago, in
emerging in Warren, Ohio, and once in emerging in Macon, Georgia:--the
feeling that the upper world is all tissue paper, that the only
choice a real man can make is to stay below with the great forces of
life forever, even though he be a tramp--the feeling that, to be a
little civilized, we sacrifice enormous powers and joys. For all I was
so tired and so very grateful to the professor, I felt like a bull in
a china shop. I should have been out in the fields, eating grass.
THE KALLYOPE YELL
[_Loudly and rapidly with a leader, College yell fashion_]
I
Proud men
Eternally
Go about,
Slander me,
Call me the "Calliope."
Sizz.....
Fizz.....
II
I am the Gutter Dream,
Tune-maker, born of steam,
Tooting joy, tooting hope.
I am the Kallyope,
Car called the Kallyope.
Willy willy willy wah HOO!
See the flags: snow-white tent,
See the bear and elephant,
See the monkey jump the rope,
Listen to the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope!
Soul of the rhinoceros
And the hippopotamus
(Listen to the lion roar!)
Jaguar, cockatoot,
Loons, owls,
Hoot, Hoot.
Listen to the lion roar,
Listen to the lion roar,
Listen to the lion R-O-A-R!
Hear the leopard cry for gore,
Willy willy willy wah HOO!
Hail the bloody Indian band,
Hail, all hail the popcorn stand,
Hail to Barnum's picture there,
People's idol everywhere,
Whoop, whoop, whoop, WHOOP!
Music of the mob am I,
Circus day's tremendous cry:--
I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope!
Hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot, hoot toot,
Willy willy willy wah HOO!
Sizz, fizz.....
III
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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