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

Chapter 45: THE TIGER ON PARADE

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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.

THE TIGER ON PARADE

The Sparrow and the Robin on a toot

Drunk on honey-dew and violet’s breath

Came knocking at the brazen bars of Death.

And Death, no other than a tiger caged,

In a street parade that had no ending,

Roared at them and clawed at them and raged—

Whose chirping was the height of their offending.

His paws too big—their fluttering bodies small

Escaped unscathed above the City Hall.

They learned new dances, scattering birdy laughter,

And filled again their throats with honey-dew.

A Maltese kitten killed them, two days after.

But they had had their fill. It was enough:—

Had quarreled, made up, on many a lilac swayed,

Darted through sunny thunder-clouds and rainbows,

High above that tiger on parade.