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

Chapter 24: WHEN PETER JACKSON PREACHED IN THE OLD CHURCH

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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.

WHEN PETER JACKSON PREACHED IN THE OLD CHURCH

To be sung to the tune of the old Negro Spiritual “Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I’ll pray.”

Peter Jackson was a-preaching

And the house was still as snow.

He whispered of repentance

And the lights were dim and low

And were almost out

When he gave the first shout:

“Arise, arise,

Cry out your eyes.”

And we mourned all our terrible sins away.

Clean, clean away.

Then we marched around, around,

And sang with a wonderful sound:—

“Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I’ll pray.

Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I’ll pray.”

And we fell by the altar

And fell by the aisle,

And found our Savior

In just a little while,

We all found Jesus at the break of the day,

We all found Jesus at the break of the day.

Blessed Jesus,

Blessed Jesus.