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

Chapter 26: DAVY JONES’ DOOR-BELL

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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.

DAVY JONES’ DOOR-BELL

A Chant for Boys with Manly Voices.

Every line sung one step deeper than the line preceding.

Any sky-bird sings,

“Ring, ring!”

Any church-chime calls,

“Dong ding!”

Any cannon says,

“Boom bang!”

Any whirlwind says,

“Whing whang!”

The bell-buoy hums and roars,

“Ding dong!”

And way down deep,

Where fishes throng,

By Davy Jones’ big deep-sea door,

Shaking the ocean’s flowery floor,

His door-bell booms

“Dong dong,

Dong dong,”

Deep, deep down,

“Clang boom,

Boom dong,

Boom dong!”