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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 53: IN WHICH ROOSEVELT IS COMPARED TO SAUL
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.

IN WHICH ROOSEVELT IS COMPARED TO SAUL

Written and published in 1913, and republished five years later, in The Boston Transcript, on the death of Roosevelt.

Where is David?... Oh God’s people
Saul has passed, the good and great.
Mourn for Saul, the first anointed,
Head and shoulders o’er the state.
He was found among the prophets:
Judge and monarch, merged in one.
But the wars of Saul are ended,
And the works of Saul are done.
Where is David, ruddy shepherd,
God’s boy-king for Israel?
Mystic, ardent, dowered with beauty,
Singing where still waters dwell?
Prophet, find that destined minstrel
Wandering on the range today,
Driving sheep, and crooning softly
Psalms that cannot pass away.
“David waits,” the prophet answers,
“In a black, notorious den,
In a cave upon the border,
With four hundred outlaw men.
“He is fair and loved of women,
Mighty hearted, born to sing:
Thieving, weeping, erring, praying,
Radiant, royal rebel-king.
“He will come with harp and psaltry,
Quell his troop of convict swine,
Quell his mad-dog roaring rascals,
Witching them with tunes divine.
“They will ram the walls of Zion,
They will win us Salem hill,
All for David, shepherd David,
Singing like a mountain rill.”