"But you--you can help so much more. You can help spiritually. You can help to shape things, give form and thought and poignancy to the most matter-of-fact existence; show people how to think and live and appreciate beauty. What does it matter if some of them jeer at you, or trample on your work? What matters is that those for whom your message is intended will know you by your work." --STACY AUMONIER, _Just Outside_. Of all living Americans who have contributed to the advance of English poetry in the twentieth century, no one has given more both as prophet and priest than Vachel Lindsay. His poems are notable for originality, pictorial beauty, and thrilling music. He belongs to no modern school, but is doing his best to found one; and when I think of his love of a loud noise, I call him a Cymbalist. Yet when I use the word _noise_ to describe his verse, I use it not only in its present, but in its earlier meaning, as when Edmund Waller saluted Chloris with While I listen to thy voice, Chloris! I feel my life decay; That powerful noise Calls my flitting soul away. This use of the word, meaning an agreeable, harmonious sound, was current from Chaucer to Coleridge. My first acquaintance with Mr. Lindsay's poetry began with a masterpiece, _General William Booth Enters into Heaven_. Early in the year 1913, before I had become a subscriber to Harriet Monroe's _Poetry_, I found among the clippings in the back of a copy of the _Independent_ this extraordinary burst of music. I carried it in my pocket for a year. Nothing since Francis Thompson's _In No Strange Land_ had given me such a spinal chill. Later I learned that it had appeared for the first time in the issue of _Poetry_ for January, 1913. All lovers of verse owe a debt of gratitude to Miss Monroe for bringing the new poet to the attention of the public; and all students of contemporary movements in metre ought to subscribe to her monthly magazine; the numbers naturally vary in value, but almost any one may contain a "find"; as I discovered to my pleasure in reading _Niagara_ in the summer of 1917.