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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 64: I—MY FATHERS CAME FROM KENTUCKY
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.

I—MY FATHERS CAME FROM KENTUCKY

I was born in Illinois,—
Have lived there many days.
And I have Northern words,
And thoughts,
And ways.
But my great grandfathers came
To the west with Daniel Boone,
And taught his babes to read,
And heard the red-bird’s tune;
And heard the turkey’s call,
And stilled the panther’s cry,
And rolled on the blue-grass hills,
And looked God in the eye.
And feud and Hell were theirs;
Love, like the moon’s desire,
Love like a burning mine,
Love like rifle-fire.
I tell tales out of school
Till these Yankees hate my style.
Why should the young cad cry,
Shout with joy for a mile?
Why do I faint with love
Till the prairies dip and reel?
My heart is a kicking horse
Shod with Kentucky steel.
No drop of my blood from north
Of Mason and Dixon’s line.
And this racer in my breast
Tears my ribs for a sign.
But I ran in Kentucky hills
Last week. They were hearth and home....
And the church at Grassy Springs,
Under the red-bird’s wings
Was peace and honeycomb.