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

Chapter 54: HAIL TO THE SONS OF ROOSEVELT

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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.

HAIL TO THE SONS OF ROOSEVELT

“Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.”—Samson’s riddle.

There is no name for brother

Like the name of Jonathan

The son of Saul.

And so we greet you all:

The sons of Roosevelt—

The sons of Saul.

Four brother Jonathans went out to battle.

Let every Yankee poet sing their praise

Through all the days—

What David sang of Saul

And Jonathan, beloved more than all.

God grant such sons, begot of our young men,

To make each generation glad again.

Let sons of Saul be springing up again:

Out of the eater, fire and power again.

From the lost lion, honey for all men.

I hear the sacred Rocky Mountains call,

I hear the Mississippi Jordan call:

“Stand up, America, and praise them all,

Living and dead, the fine young sons of Saul!”