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

Chapter 61: THE SPRINGFIELD OF THE FAR FUTURE

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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 SPRINGFIELD OF THE FAR FUTURE

Some day our town will grow old.

“She is wicked and raw,” men say,

“Awkward and brash and profane.”

But the years have a healing way.

The years of God are like bread,

Balm of Gilead and sweet.

And the soul of this little town

Our Father will make complete.

Some day our town will grow old,

Filled with the fullness of time,

Treasure on treasure heaped

Of beauty’s tradition sublime.

Proud and gay and grey

Like Hannah with Samuel blest.

Humble and girlish and white

Like Mary, the manger guest.

Like Mary the manger queen

Bringing the God of Light

Till Christmas is here indeed

And earth has no more of night,

And hosts of Magi come,

The wisest under the sun

Bringing frankincense and praise

For her gift of the Infinite One.