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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 47: STANZAS IN JUST THE RIGHT TONE FOR THE SPIRITED GENTLEMEN WHO WOULD CONQUER MEXICO
By Vachel Lindsay
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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.

STANZAS IN JUST THE RIGHT TONE FOR THE SPIRITED GENTLEMEN WHO WOULD CONQUER MEXICO

Alexander
Would I might waken in you Alexander,
Murdering the nations wickedly,
Flooding his time with blood remorselessly,
Sowing new Empires, where the Athenian light,
Knowledge and music, slay the Asian night,
And men behold Apollo in the sun.
God make us splendid, though by grievous wrong.
God make us fierce and strong.
Mohammed
Would that on horses swifter than desire
We rode behind Mohammed ’round the zones
With swords unceasing, sowing fields of bones,
Till New America, ancient Mizraim,
Cry: “Allah is the God of Abraham.”
God make our host relentless as the sun,
Each soul your spear, your banner and your slave,
God help us to be brave.

Napoleon
Would that the cold adventurous Corsican
Woke with new hope of glory, strong from sleep,
Instructed how to conquer and to keep
More justly, having dreamed awhile, yea crowned
With shining flowers, God-given; while the sound
Of singing continents, following the sun,
Calls freeborn men to guard Napoleon’s throne
Who makes the eternal hopes of man his own.