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The golden whales of California, and other rhymes in the American language cover

The golden whales of California, and other rhymes in the American language

Chapter 22: THE APPLE BLOSSOM SNOW BLUES
By Vachel Lindsay
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American LiteraturePoetry

About This Book

The collection gathers lyrical and narrative poems that range from long, scene-setting pieces celebrating California's landscapes and the new art of the moving picture to playful rhymed scenarios and verse games. It interleaves meditations on history, myth, science, and religion with comic sketches and dialectal songs, moves into wartime reflections and elegies for fallen poets, and closes with local, Midwestern vignettes and personal tributes. The poet shifts between high-lyric description, satirical invective, and vernacular rhythms, experimenting with form and voice to present an uneven but energetic portrait of American life, technology, and regional identity in early twentieth-century verse.

THE APPLE BLOSSOM SNOW BLUES

A “blues” is a song in the mood of Milton’s Il Penseroso, or a paragraph from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. This present production is the chronicle of the secret soul of a vaudeville man, as he dances in the limelight with his haughty lady. Let the reader take special pains to make his own tune for this production, to a very delicate drum beat.

“Your
Dandelion beauty,
Your
Cherry-blossom beauty,
Your
Apple-blossom beauty,
I will dance as I can,
O
You rag time lady,
O
You jazz dancing lady,
O
You blues-singing lady,”
Thinks the blues-singing man.
“Your
Grace and slightness,
And your fragrant whiteness,
Make me see the bending
Of an apple-blossom bough.
You
Are a fairy,
Yet a jump-jazz dancer,
And your heart
Is a robin,
Singing, making merry
With the apple-flowers now.”
See him kneel and canter
And smirk and banter,
And essay her heart
While the gourd horns blow.
For he is her lover
And
Her dancing partner,
In the blues he made
Called “The Apple Blossom Snow.”
She does her duty
No more
Than her duty,
Yet the packed house cheers
To the gallery rim.
Her young scorn fires them,
Its pep inspires them,
They watch her lover
And envy him.
He does not fathom
What her heart has in keeping
Till that last circus leaping
Takes all by surprise.
Then he catches her softly,
Saves her gently,
And a mood for his soul
Lights her pansy eyes.
Then
She steps rare measures.
Her eyes are treasures.
Brave truth shines out
From her young-witch glance.
From the velvety shade,
Ah, the thoughts of the maid.
Relenting glory,
Unveiled by chance.
Though soon thereafter
She hides in laughter,
And flouts all his loving,
He will dance as he can,
As he can,
Like a man,
With his jazz dancing wonder,
With his pansy blossom wonder,
With his apple blossom wonder,
With his rag time lady,
Grand finale of jazz music, like the fall of a pile of dishes in the kitchen.
The
Rag
Time
Man.