This lengthy compilation remains one of my favorite research/writing projects. It began when I discovered the account of an eccentric poet who walked across the Southern Appalachians in the spring of 1906. Although Vachel Lindsay's literary stature has eroded with time, the highs and lows of his life story, and especially his dusty hike through the mountains of Georgia and North Carolina, continue to haunt me. I think Lindsay never found his place in the world. But how many of us can say that we have?
His enthusiastic declamations baffled most people, and his fervent efforts to share a philosophy of beauty met with indifference, if not hostility. Now and then, his flamboyant performances of spoken/chanted/sung verse did attract some appreciative audiences. The chasm was deep and wide, though, between the world as he imagined it could be and the world as it is.
When first presented in October 2010, "Troubadour" had 18 meandering installments. I've rolled those into three parts for re-publication here.
I
Well, now. Here’s a story worth telling, though I’ll admit I’m not sure how to tell it.The poet Vachel Lindsay came to Jackson County (NC) in 1906. A twenty-six-year-old native of Springfield, Illinois, he was walking across the country to spread a message of hope that he called “the gospel of beauty.”
Vachel Lindsay (1879-1932)
I learned about his journey after happening upon his account of a visit to Tallulah Gorge, Georgia. From Tallulah, he walked north to Highlands, Cashiers, Asheville and on to Tennessee.
While I remembered his name, that was about all that I could recall of Vachel Lindsay from my college days. So I went back and took my old copy of American Lit, Volume Two from the shelf to get reacquainted. The editors of that text lumped him in with Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg and Edward Arlington Robinson as poets who “recreate in serious poetry the extravagant humor of the old West or the dry humor of Down East.”
Later anthologies of American literature, or at least the ones I checked, had dropped Lindsay, and I can understand why the literary establishment has forgotten him with the passage of time. Reading his words on the printed page, I was not particularly impressed.
That misses the point, though. Lindsay did not write his poems for the eye, but for the ear, and became known as “The Father of Singing Poetry” and “The Prairie Troubadour.” Vachel Lindsay would not so much read as chant his poems for an audience. Some editions of his poems even include Lindsay’s instructions on how they should be delivered:
To be chanted in deep bass, all the heavy accents very heavy.
To be read slowly and softly in the manner of insinuating music, all the -o- sounds very golden.
Vachel Lindsay had attended the Art Institute of Chicago before going to New York City where he was a self-styled troubadour, selling his poems on the streets and bartering his pamphlet, Rhymes to Be Traded for Bread, in exchange for food.
Edgar Lee Masters, author of Spoon River Anthology, wrote a biography of Lindsay. He describes the point at which Lindsay decided to leave New York:
Lindsay abhorred the tyranny of convention, and loved the freedom of the untrammeled life as much as Whitman, almost as much as Johnny Appleseed….
He mixed with Jesus of Nazareth a lasting reverence for Prince Siddartha and for Confucius; and his mysticism led him to Swendenborg and kept him there as long as he lived…
He was willing to starve, but not to be shackled to business, to the system which standardizes the lives of the young and uses them as it does any other raw material. These resolutions were aided by the fact that there was scarcely anything of a practical nature that he could do.
On March 8, 1906, Vachel Lindsay got off a boat on the banks of the St. John’s River in Florida and started walking. We’re doubly fortunate that the story of trip, including his time in North Carolina, is told in Lindsay’s own A Handbook for Beggars, while the same trip is detailed in Master’s book, Vachel Lindsay: A Poet in America.
Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950)
After a quick perusal of his early works I was inclined to be dismissive of Vachel Lindsay’s poetry, but learning more him and what he was trying to accomplish, I've adopted a more generous attitude.
I’m still not sure how to tell this story, except to say it might take a while. I can already foresee rabbit trails veering off in every direction.
For now, here’s how Lindsay dedicated his book about the trip that brought him through Cashiers Valley:
THERE are one hundred new poets in the villages of the land. This Handy Guide is dedicated first of all to them.
It is also dedicated to the younger sons of the wide earth, to the runaway boys and girls getting further from home every hour, to the prodigals who are still wasting their substance in riotous living, be they gamblers or blasphemers or plain drunks; to those heretics of whatever school to whom life is a rebellion with banners; to those who are willing to accept counsel if it be mad counsel.
This book is also dedicated to those budding philosophers who realize that every creature is a beggar in the presence of the beneficent sun, to those righteous ones who know that all righteousness is as filthy rags.
Moreover, as an act of contrition, reenlistment and fellowship this book is dedicated to all the children of Don Quixote who see giants where most folks see windmills, those Galahads dear to Christ and those virgin sisters of Joan of Arc who serve the lepers on their knees and march in shabby armor against the proud, who look into the lightning with the eyes of the mountain cat. They do more soldierly things every day than this book records, yet they are mine own people, my nobler kin to whom I have been recreant, and so I finally dedicate this book to them.
– These are the rules of the road:
(1) Keep away from the Cities;
(2) Keep away from the railroads;
(3) Have nothing to do with money and carry no baggage;
(4) Ask for dinner about quarter after eleven;
(5) Ask for supper, lodging and breakfast about quarter of five;
(6) Travel alone;
(7) Be neat, deliberate, chaste and civil;
(8) Preach the Gospel of Beauty.
And without further parley, let us proceed to inculcate these, by illustration, precept and dogma.
II
“Sing for your supper.”
Essentially, that was Vachel Lindsay’s strategy for his long-distance walk through the Southeast in the spring of 1906. He would recite his poems and draw his pictures in exchange for a meal and a bed.
Vachel Lindsay in 1912
Demonstrating his resolve, he began his hike in Florida by spending his last nickel on a bag of peanuts. His avowed mission was "sharing the lives of and bringing hope to the common people in the depths.”
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Somehow, Lindsay managed to get by. In Atlanta, he pocketed some cash from giving lectures and reading poems. He also enjoyed the hospitality of the local Salvation Army, which might have inspired his best-known poem, General William Booth Enters into Heaven.
I’ve had to remind myself that the people of 1906 couldn’t switch on a radio or television. They weren’t clicking their mice or thumbing their smartphones. So, folks starved for entertainment might welcome an itinerant troubadour.
Or not.
Despite his relative financial success in Atlanta, Lindsay's income in the mountains was nil. He didn’t even try to draw an audience in Highlands after he saw that it was a quiet summer resort town for wealthy northerners.
Edgar Lee Masters tells how the poet misjudged one audience in Tennessee:
In the hills he attended a Hardshell Baptist church, and stayed with some pious, rough people. He started to read “The Tree of the Laughing Bells” to them. In the midst of the performance the young woman and the old woman left the room unceremoniously. They returned and Lindsay, not sufficiently persuaded that they did not want to hear the poem, but that they should be converted willy-nilly to beauty, prevailed upon them to listen again.
The old lady grew angry now, and told Lindsay that she no use for such lies. She wanted something with the gospel of Jesus Christ in it, the Old Book was enough for her. The result was that she would not accept the poem as pay for his entertainment, and Lindsay was compelled to leave owing for it….
The fledgling poet counted on one work in particular to be his meal ticket and that was The Tree of the Laughing Bells. I have to remind myself that Lindsay’s energetic vocal stylings enlivened what otherwise might have been interminably tedious…but you be the judge:
The Tree of Laughing Bells, or The Wings of the Morning
[A Poem for Aviators]
How the Wings Were Made
From many morning-glories
That in an hour will fade,
From many pansy buds
Gathered in the shade,
From lily of the valley
And dandelion buds,
From fiery poppy-buds
Are the Wings of the Morning made.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Somehow, Lindsay managed to get by. In Atlanta, he pocketed some cash from giving lectures and reading poems. He also enjoyed the hospitality of the local Salvation Army, which might have inspired his best-known poem, General William Booth Enters into Heaven.
I’ve had to remind myself that the people of 1906 couldn’t switch on a radio or television. They weren’t clicking their mice or thumbing their smartphones. So, folks starved for entertainment might welcome an itinerant troubadour.
Or not.
Despite his relative financial success in Atlanta, Lindsay's income in the mountains was nil. He didn’t even try to draw an audience in Highlands after he saw that it was a quiet summer resort town for wealthy northerners.
Edgar Lee Masters tells how the poet misjudged one audience in Tennessee:
In the hills he attended a Hardshell Baptist church, and stayed with some pious, rough people. He started to read “The Tree of the Laughing Bells” to them. In the midst of the performance the young woman and the old woman left the room unceremoniously. They returned and Lindsay, not sufficiently persuaded that they did not want to hear the poem, but that they should be converted willy-nilly to beauty, prevailed upon them to listen again.
The old lady grew angry now, and told Lindsay that she no use for such lies. She wanted something with the gospel of Jesus Christ in it, the Old Book was enough for her. The result was that she would not accept the poem as pay for his entertainment, and Lindsay was compelled to leave owing for it….
The fledgling poet counted on one work in particular to be his meal ticket and that was The Tree of the Laughing Bells. I have to remind myself that Lindsay’s energetic vocal stylings enlivened what otherwise might have been interminably tedious…but you be the judge:
The Tree of Laughing Bells, or The Wings of the Morning
[A Poem for Aviators]
How the Wings Were Made
From many morning-glories
That in an hour will fade,
From many pansy buds
Gathered in the shade,
From lily of the valley
And dandelion buds,
From fiery poppy-buds
Are the Wings of the Morning made.
The Indian Girl Who Made Them
These, the Wings of the Morning,
An Indian Maiden wove,
Intertwining subtilely
Wands from a willow grove
Beside the Sangamon --
Rude stream of Dreamland Town.
She bound them to my shoulders
With fingers golden-brown.
The wings were part of me;
The willow-wands were hot.
Pulses from my heart
Healed each bruise and spot
Of the morning-glory buds,
Beginning to unfold
Beneath her burning song of suns untold.
Ah, the ubiquitous “Lovely Indian Maiden!”
The poem continues for stanza after stanza, building dramatically before reaching a climax involving said Indian maiden:
I panted in the grassy wood;
I kissed the Indian Maid
As she took my wings from me:
With all the grace I could
I gave two throbbing bells to her
From the foot of the Laughing Tree.
And one she pressed to her golden breast
And one, gave back to me.
From Lilies of the valley --
See them fade.
From poppy-blooms all frayed,
From dandelions gray with care,
From pansy-faces, worn and torn,
From morning-glories --
See them fade --
From all things fragile, faint and fair
Are the Wings of the Morning made!
Later, in a letter to a friend, Vachel Lindsay recounted the 1906 hike:
I had had very little response anywhere and very little understanding. No one cared for my pictures, no one cared for my verse, and I turned beggar in sheer desperation. Many people try to gloss this over now and make out it was a merry little spring excursion and I didn't really mean it. They are dead wrong. It was a life and death struggle, nothing less. I was entirely prepared to die for my work, if necessary, by the side of the road, and was almost at the point of it at times. . . . [My parents] were certainly at this time intensely hostile to everything I did, said, wrote, thought, or drew. Things were in a state where it was infinitely easier to beg from door to door than to go home, or even die by the ditch on the highway.
I will never forget the easy, dreaming Kentucky and the droning bees in the blue grass, and the walks with Cousin Eudora and Aunt Eudora, and the queer feeling of being the family disgrace somewhat straightened out when I stood up to read 'The Tree of Laughing Bells' to the school. As far as I know, I read it in my beggar's raiment. I am sure I felt that way, and it was the kind hearts around me in that particular spot that made me want to live.
I panted in the grassy wood;
I kissed the Indian Maid
As she took my wings from me:
With all the grace I could
I gave two throbbing bells to her
From the foot of the Laughing Tree.
And one she pressed to her golden breast
And one, gave back to me.
From Lilies of the valley --
See them fade.
From poppy-blooms all frayed,
From dandelions gray with care,
From pansy-faces, worn and torn,
From morning-glories --
See them fade --
From all things fragile, faint and fair
Are the Wings of the Morning made!
Later, in a letter to a friend, Vachel Lindsay recounted the 1906 hike:
I had had very little response anywhere and very little understanding. No one cared for my pictures, no one cared for my verse, and I turned beggar in sheer desperation. Many people try to gloss this over now and make out it was a merry little spring excursion and I didn't really mean it. They are dead wrong. It was a life and death struggle, nothing less. I was entirely prepared to die for my work, if necessary, by the side of the road, and was almost at the point of it at times. . . . [My parents] were certainly at this time intensely hostile to everything I did, said, wrote, thought, or drew. Things were in a state where it was infinitely easier to beg from door to door than to go home, or even die by the ditch on the highway.
I will never forget the easy, dreaming Kentucky and the droning bees in the blue grass, and the walks with Cousin Eudora and Aunt Eudora, and the queer feeling of being the family disgrace somewhat straightened out when I stood up to read 'The Tree of Laughing Bells' to the school. As far as I know, I read it in my beggar's raiment. I am sure I felt that way, and it was the kind hearts around me in that particular spot that made me want to live.
III
Lindsay tried to take poetry back to its spoken roots. I should say he took poetry back to its spoken roots, an achievement I intend to make clear eventually.
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, (1866-1949)
Around the same time I took an interest in the adventures of Vachel Lindsay, I heard a story from Meetings with Remarkable Men, by G. I. Gurdjieff. The scene described by Gurdjieff must have been exactly what Lindsay hoped to find, or cultivate, among “the common folk of the American countryside.”
Maybe Vachel should have tried Armenia.
From Meetings with Remarkable Men:
MY FATHER WAS WIDELY KNOWN, during the final decades of the last century and the beginning of this one, as an ashokh, that is, a poet and narrator, under the nickname of' Adash, and although he was not a professional ashokh but only an amateur, he was in his day very popular among the inhabitants of many countries of Transcaucasia and Asia Minor.
Ashokh was the name given everywhere in Asia and the Balkan peninsula to the local bards, who composed, recited or sang poems, songs, legends, folk-tales, and all sorts of stories.
In spite of the fact that these people of the past who devoted themselves to such a career were in most cases illiterate, having not even been to an elementary school in their childhood, they possessed such a memory and such alertness of mind as would now be considered remarkable and even phenomenal.
They not only knew by heart innumerable and often very lengthy narratives and poems, and sang from memory all their various melodies, but when improvising in their own, so to say, subjective way, they hit upon the appropriate rhymes and changes of rhythm for their verses with astounding rapidity.
At the present time men with such abilities are no longer to be found anywhere.
Even when I was very young, it was being said that they were becoming scarcer and scarcer.
I personally saw a number of these ashokhs who were considered famous in those days, and their faces were strongly impressed on my memory.
I happened to see them because my father used to take me as a child to the contests where these poet ashokhs, coming from various countries, such as Persia, Turkey, the Caucasus and even parts of Turkestan, competed before a great throng of people in improvising and singing.
This usually proceeded in the following way:
One of the participants in the contest, chosen by lot, would begin, in singing an improvised melody, to put to his partner some question on a religious or philosophical theme, or on the meaning and origin of some well-known legend, tradition or belief, and the other would reply, also in song, and in his own improvised subjective melody; and these improvised subjective melodies, moreover, had always to correspond in their tonality to the previously produced consonances as well as to what is called by real musical science the 'ansapalnianly flowing echo.
All this was sung in verse, chiefly in Turko-Tartar, which was then the accepted common language of the peoples of these localities, who spoke different dialects.
These contests would last weeks and sometimes even months, and would conclude with the award of prizes and presents- provided by the audience and usually consisting of cattle, rugs and so on-to those singers who, according to the general verdict, had most distinguished themselves.
I witnessed three such contests, the first of which took place in Turkey in the town of Van, the second in Azerbaijan in the town of Karabakh, and the third in the small town of Subatan in the region of Kars.
In Alexandropol and Kars, the towns where my family lived during my childhood, my father was often invited to evening gatherings to which many people who knew him came in order to hear his stories and songs.
At these gatherings he would recite one of the many legends or poems he knew, according to the choice of those present, or he would render in song the dialogues between the different characters.
The whole night would sometimes not be long enough for finishing a story and the audience would meet again on the following evening...
I said there would be some rabbit trails on this journey.
IV
Stone Mountain, Georgia, ca. 1902
While Vachel Lindsay was walking from Atlanta to the mountains during the last week of April 1906, he was imagining the book that he would write:
It should contain my sermons on the new Christ, and all other things I would wish to say as a priest of art, and cannot say by word of mouth. That is my only chance to evangelize peacefully….
My book should contain the form of my gospel for each type of man I am to meet, a little sermon for each man, scholar, poet, editor, teacher. A Pilgrim’s Message would be a possible title, or I Prophecy the New Earth, or The Songs of a Dreaming Tramp, or The Passer-by, or The Dreams of a Rhyming Tramp, or A Beggar from the Fairyland….
I will do everything for the sake of being my own master….I had better be a beggar than a trader tied to the machinery of his task. In this world he finds no pity. But the beggar’s world is full of brotherly kindness.
Lindsay biographer Edgar Lee Masters called the projected book:
One of the many visions which Lindsay had without materialization….Lindsay was really afflicted with a species of megalomania, as Whitman was for that matter; but where Whitman sought to make a nation of comrades and to spread the dear love of comrades over America, Lindsay was concerned with moralizations of a lower order, so that his descent from an artist to an anti-prohibition lecturer was neither so violent nor so incongruous as one might think at first.
In any event, Vachel had more to think about than the books he would never get around to writing. From A Handy Guide for Beggars:
LET us now recall a certain adventure among the moonshiners. When I walked north from Atlanta Easter morning, on Peachtree road, orchards were flowering everywhere. Resurrection songs flew across the road from humble blunt steeples.
Kennesaw Mountain, GA
Stony Mountain, miles to the east, Kenesaw on the western edge of things, and all the rest of the rolling land made the beginning of a gradual ascent by which I was to climb the Blue Ridge. The road mounted the watershed between the Atlantic and the gulf.
An old man took me into his wagon for a mile. I asked what sort of people I would meet on the Blue Ridge. He answered, "They make blockade whisky up there. But if you don't go around hunting stills by the creeks, or in the woods away from the road, they'll be awful glad to see you. They are all moonshiners, but if they likes a man they loves him, and they're as likely to get to lovin’ you as not.”
Stony Mountain, miles to the east, Kenesaw on the western edge of things, and all the rest of the rolling land made the beginning of a gradual ascent by which I was to climb the Blue Ridge. The road mounted the watershed between the Atlantic and the gulf.
An old man took me into his wagon for a mile. I asked what sort of people I would meet on the Blue Ridge. He answered, "They make blockade whisky up there. But if you don't go around hunting stills by the creeks, or in the woods away from the road, they'll be awful glad to see you. They are all moonshiners, but if they likes a man they loves him, and they're as likely to get to lovin’ you as not.”
V
In one of the more coherent, but no less ecstatic, passages from A Handy Guide for Beggars, Vachel Lindsay described his day at Tallulah Gorge.
He had just spent several days to walking from Atlanta to Tallulah on his way to the mountains in April 1906. Taking some cheese and crackers as his fare for the day by the waterfalls, he clambered over the rocks and lived to tell about it. This is lengthy, but I'm posting the whole chapter:
THE FALLS OF TALLULAH
I
THE CALL OF THE WATER
THE dust of many miles was upon me. I felt uncouth in the presence of the sun-dried stones. Here was a natural bathing-place. Who could resist it? I climbed further down the canon, holding to the bushes. The cliff along which the water rushed to the fall's foot was smooth and seemed artificially made, though it had been so hewn by the fury of the cataclysm in ages past. I took off my clothes and put my shoulders against the granite, being obliged to lean back a little to conform to its angle. I was standing with my left shoulder almost touching the perilous main column of water.
A little fall that hurried along by itself a bit nearer the bank flowed over me. It came with headway. Though it looked so innocent, I could scarcely hold up against its power. But it gave me delight to maintain myself. The touch of the stone was balm to my walk- worn body and dust-fevered feet. Like a sacerdotal robe the water flowed over my shoulders and I thought myself priest of the solitude. I stepped out into the air. With unwonted energy I was able to throw off the coldness of my wet frame. The water there at the fall's foot was like a thousand elves singing. "Joy to all creatures !" cried the birds. "Joy to all creatures! Glory, glory, glory to the wild falls!"
II
THE PIPING OF PAN
I was getting myself sunburned, stretched out on the warm dry rocks. Down over the steep edge, somewhere near the foot of the next descent I heard the pipes of Pan. Why should I dress and go? I made my shoes and clothes into a bundle and threw them down the cliff and climbed over, clinging to the steep by mere twigs. I seemed to hear the piping as I approached the terrace at the fall's base. Then the sound of music blended with the stream's strange voice and I turned to merge myself again with its waters. Against the leaning wall of the cliff I placed my shoulders.
The descending current srnote me, wrestling with wildwood laughter, threatening to crush me and hurl me to the base of the mountain. But just as before my feet were well set in a notch of the cliff that went across the stream, cut there a million years ago. It was a curious combination to discover, this stream-wide notch, and above it this wall with the water spread like a crystal robe over it.
In the centre of the fall a Cyclops could have stood to bathe, and on the edge was the same provision in miniature for feeble man. And it was the more curious to find this plan repeated in detail by successive cataracts of the canon, unmistakably wrought by the slow hand of geologic ages. And to see the water of the deep central stream undisturbed in midst of the fall and still crystalline, and to see it slide down the steep incline and strike each, notch at the foot with sudden music and appalling foam, was more wonderful than the simple telling can explain.
Each sheet of crystal that came over my shoulders seemed now to pour into them rather than over them. I lifted my mouth and drank as a desert bird drinks rain. My downstretched arms and extended fingers and the spreading spray seemed one. My heart with its exultant blood seemed but the curve of a cataract over the cliff of my soul.
III
PERIL, VANITY, AND ADORATION
Led by the pipes of Pan, I again descended. Once more that sound, almost overtaken, interwove itself with the water's cry, and I merged body and soul with the stream and the music. The margin of another cataract crashed upon me. In the recklessness of pleasure, one arm swung into the main current. Then the water threatened my life. To save myself, I was kneeling on one knee. I reached out blindly and found a hold at last in a slippery cleft, and later, it seemed an age, with the other hand I was able to reach one leaf. The leaf did not break. At last its bough was in my grasp and I crawled frightened into the sun. I sat long on a warm patch of grass. But the cliffs and the water were not really my enemies. They sent a wind to give me delight. Never was the taste of the air so sweet as then. The touch of it was on my lips like fruit. There was a flattery in the tree-limbs bending near my shoulders. They said, "There is brotherhood in your footfall on our roots and the touch of your hand on our boughs." The spray of the splashed foam was wine. I was the unchallenged possessor of all of nature my body and soul could lay hold upon. It was the fair season between spring and summer when no one came to this place. Like Selkirk, I was monarch of all I surveyed. In my folly I seemed to feel strange powers creeping into my veins from the sod. I forgot my near-disaster. I said in my heart, "0 Mother Earth majestical, the touch of your creatures has comforted me, and I feel the strength of the soil creeping up into my dust. From this patch of soft grass, power and courage come up into me from your bosorn, from the foundation of your continents. I feel within me the soul of iron from your iron mines, and the soul of lava from your deepest fires”
IV
THE BLOOD UNQUENCHABLE
The satyrs in the bushes were laughing at me and daring me to try the water again. I stood on the edge of the rapids where were many stones coming up out of the foam. I threw logs across. The rocks held them in place. I lay down between the logs in the liquid ice. I defied it heartily. And my brother the river had mercy upon me, and slew me not. Amid the shout of the stream the birds were singing: "Joy, joy, joy to all creatures, and happiness to the whole earth. Glory, glory, glory to the wild falls."
I struggled out from between the logs and threw my bundle over the cliff, and again descended, for I heard the pipes of Pan, just below me there, too plainly for delay. They seemed to say "Look! Here is a more exquisite place." The sun beat down upon me. I felt myself twin brother to the sun. My body was lit with an all-conquering fever. I had walked through tropical wildernesses for many a mile, gathering sunshine. And now in an afternoon I was gambling my golden heat against the icy silver of the river and winning my wager, while all the leaves were laughing on all the trees. And again I stood in a Heaven-prepared place, and the water poured in glory upon my shoulders.
Why was it so dark? Was a storm coming? I was dazed as a child in the theatre beholding the crowd go out after the sudden end of a solemn play. My clothes, it appeared, were half on. I was kneeling, looking up. I counted the falls to the top of the canon. It was night, and I had wrestled with them all. My spirit was beyond all reason happy. This was a day for which I had not planned. I felt like one crowned. My blood was glowing like the blood of the crocus, the blood of the tiger-lily.
And so I meditated, and then at last the chill of weariness began to touch me and in my heart I said, "Oh Mother Earth, for all my vanity, I know I am but a perishable flower in a cleft of the rock. I give thanks to you who have fed me the wild milk of this river, who have upheld me like a child of the gods throughout this day." Around a curve in the canon, down stream, growing each moment sweeter, I heard the pipes of Pan.
V
THE GIFT OF TALLULAH
Go, you my brothers, whose hearts are in sore need of delight, and bathe in the falls of Tallulah. That experience will be for the foot-sore a balm, for the languid a lash, for the dry-throated pedant the very cup of nature. To those crushed by the inventions of cities, wounded by evil men, it will be a washing away of tears and of blood. Yea, it will be to them all, what it was to my heart that day, the sweet, sweet blowing of the reckless pipes of Pan.
He had just spent several days to walking from Atlanta to Tallulah on his way to the mountains in April 1906. Taking some cheese and crackers as his fare for the day by the waterfalls, he clambered over the rocks and lived to tell about it. This is lengthy, but I'm posting the whole chapter:
THE FALLS OF TALLULAH
I
THE CALL OF THE WATER
THE dust of many miles was upon me. I felt uncouth in the presence of the sun-dried stones. Here was a natural bathing-place. Who could resist it? I climbed further down the canon, holding to the bushes. The cliff along which the water rushed to the fall's foot was smooth and seemed artificially made, though it had been so hewn by the fury of the cataclysm in ages past. I took off my clothes and put my shoulders against the granite, being obliged to lean back a little to conform to its angle. I was standing with my left shoulder almost touching the perilous main column of water.
A little fall that hurried along by itself a bit nearer the bank flowed over me. It came with headway. Though it looked so innocent, I could scarcely hold up against its power. But it gave me delight to maintain myself. The touch of the stone was balm to my walk- worn body and dust-fevered feet. Like a sacerdotal robe the water flowed over my shoulders and I thought myself priest of the solitude. I stepped out into the air. With unwonted energy I was able to throw off the coldness of my wet frame. The water there at the fall's foot was like a thousand elves singing. "Joy to all creatures !" cried the birds. "Joy to all creatures! Glory, glory, glory to the wild falls!"
II
THE PIPING OF PAN
I was getting myself sunburned, stretched out on the warm dry rocks. Down over the steep edge, somewhere near the foot of the next descent I heard the pipes of Pan. Why should I dress and go? I made my shoes and clothes into a bundle and threw them down the cliff and climbed over, clinging to the steep by mere twigs. I seemed to hear the piping as I approached the terrace at the fall's base. Then the sound of music blended with the stream's strange voice and I turned to merge myself again with its waters. Against the leaning wall of the cliff I placed my shoulders.
The descending current srnote me, wrestling with wildwood laughter, threatening to crush me and hurl me to the base of the mountain. But just as before my feet were well set in a notch of the cliff that went across the stream, cut there a million years ago. It was a curious combination to discover, this stream-wide notch, and above it this wall with the water spread like a crystal robe over it.
In the centre of the fall a Cyclops could have stood to bathe, and on the edge was the same provision in miniature for feeble man. And it was the more curious to find this plan repeated in detail by successive cataracts of the canon, unmistakably wrought by the slow hand of geologic ages. And to see the water of the deep central stream undisturbed in midst of the fall and still crystalline, and to see it slide down the steep incline and strike each, notch at the foot with sudden music and appalling foam, was more wonderful than the simple telling can explain.
Each sheet of crystal that came over my shoulders seemed now to pour into them rather than over them. I lifted my mouth and drank as a desert bird drinks rain. My downstretched arms and extended fingers and the spreading spray seemed one. My heart with its exultant blood seemed but the curve of a cataract over the cliff of my soul.
III
PERIL, VANITY, AND ADORATION
Led by the pipes of Pan, I again descended. Once more that sound, almost overtaken, interwove itself with the water's cry, and I merged body and soul with the stream and the music. The margin of another cataract crashed upon me. In the recklessness of pleasure, one arm swung into the main current. Then the water threatened my life. To save myself, I was kneeling on one knee. I reached out blindly and found a hold at last in a slippery cleft, and later, it seemed an age, with the other hand I was able to reach one leaf. The leaf did not break. At last its bough was in my grasp and I crawled frightened into the sun. I sat long on a warm patch of grass. But the cliffs and the water were not really my enemies. They sent a wind to give me delight. Never was the taste of the air so sweet as then. The touch of it was on my lips like fruit. There was a flattery in the tree-limbs bending near my shoulders. They said, "There is brotherhood in your footfall on our roots and the touch of your hand on our boughs." The spray of the splashed foam was wine. I was the unchallenged possessor of all of nature my body and soul could lay hold upon. It was the fair season between spring and summer when no one came to this place. Like Selkirk, I was monarch of all I surveyed. In my folly I seemed to feel strange powers creeping into my veins from the sod. I forgot my near-disaster. I said in my heart, "0 Mother Earth majestical, the touch of your creatures has comforted me, and I feel the strength of the soil creeping up into my dust. From this patch of soft grass, power and courage come up into me from your bosorn, from the foundation of your continents. I feel within me the soul of iron from your iron mines, and the soul of lava from your deepest fires”
IV
THE BLOOD UNQUENCHABLE
The satyrs in the bushes were laughing at me and daring me to try the water again. I stood on the edge of the rapids where were many stones coming up out of the foam. I threw logs across. The rocks held them in place. I lay down between the logs in the liquid ice. I defied it heartily. And my brother the river had mercy upon me, and slew me not. Amid the shout of the stream the birds were singing: "Joy, joy, joy to all creatures, and happiness to the whole earth. Glory, glory, glory to the wild falls."
I struggled out from between the logs and threw my bundle over the cliff, and again descended, for I heard the pipes of Pan, just below me there, too plainly for delay. They seemed to say "Look! Here is a more exquisite place." The sun beat down upon me. I felt myself twin brother to the sun. My body was lit with an all-conquering fever. I had walked through tropical wildernesses for many a mile, gathering sunshine. And now in an afternoon I was gambling my golden heat against the icy silver of the river and winning my wager, while all the leaves were laughing on all the trees. And again I stood in a Heaven-prepared place, and the water poured in glory upon my shoulders.
Why was it so dark? Was a storm coming? I was dazed as a child in the theatre beholding the crowd go out after the sudden end of a solemn play. My clothes, it appeared, were half on. I was kneeling, looking up. I counted the falls to the top of the canon. It was night, and I had wrestled with them all. My spirit was beyond all reason happy. This was a day for which I had not planned. I felt like one crowned. My blood was glowing like the blood of the crocus, the blood of the tiger-lily.
And so I meditated, and then at last the chill of weariness began to touch me and in my heart I said, "Oh Mother Earth, for all my vanity, I know I am but a perishable flower in a cleft of the rock. I give thanks to you who have fed me the wild milk of this river, who have upheld me like a child of the gods throughout this day." Around a curve in the canon, down stream, growing each moment sweeter, I heard the pipes of Pan.
V
THE GIFT OF TALLULAH
Go, you my brothers, whose hearts are in sore need of delight, and bathe in the falls of Tallulah. That experience will be for the foot-sore a balm, for the languid a lash, for the dry-throated pedant the very cup of nature. To those crushed by the inventions of cities, wounded by evil men, it will be a washing away of tears and of blood. Yea, it will be to them all, what it was to my heart that day, the sweet, sweet blowing of the reckless pipes of Pan.
.
VI
After Vachel Lindsay’s death-defying day in Tallulah Gorge, he resumed his trip, walking the railroad tracks leading north through Clayton and Dillard in Rabun County, GA.
Mountain View from Clayton, GA
Approaching the North Carolina state line, he diverged from the railroad and spent a precious quarter to take a stagecoach for three miles on the road leading up toward Highlands. Soon, though, the weary traveler was back on foot:
The little streams I crossed scarcely afforded me a drink. Their dried borders had the footprints of swine on them.
Lameness affects one's vision. The thick woods were the dregs of the landscape, fit haunt for the acorn-grubbing sow. The road following the ridges was a monster's spine.
Those wicked brogans led me where they should not. Or maybe it was just my destiny to find what I found.
About four o'clock in the afternoon, after exploring many roads that led to futile nothing, I was on what seemed the main highway, and drugged myself into the sight of the first mortal since daybreak. He seemed like a gnome as he watched me across the furrows. And so he was, despite his red-ripe cheeks. The virginal mountain apple-tree, blossoming overhead, half covering the toad-like cabin, was out of place. It should have been some fabulous, man-devouring devil-bush from the tropics, some monstrous work of the enemies of God.
The child, just in her teens, helping the Gnome to plant sweet potatoes, had in her life planted many, and eaten few. Or so it appeared. She was a crouching lump of earth. Her father dug the furrow. She did the planting, shovelling the dirt with her hands. Her face was sodden as any in the slums of Chicago. She ran to the house a ragged girl, and came back a homespun girl, a quick change. It must not be counted against her that she did not wash her face.
The Gnome talked to me meanwhile. He had made up his mind about me. "I guess you want to stay all night ? "
"Yes."
"The next house is fifteen miles away. You are welcome if what we have is good enough for you. My wife is sick, but she will not let you be any bother."
I wanted to be noble and walk on. But I persuaded myself my feet were as sick as the woman. I accepted the Gnome's invitation.
Lindsay had arrived at Mud Creek Flats, between Dillard and Highlands. Studying an old map, I see that what he called Mud Creek Flats is near today's Sky Valley, the resort development sprawling across an especially beautiful valley to the northwest of Rabun Bald.
We were met at the door by one my host called Brother Joseph — a towering shape with an upper lip like a walrus, for it was armed with tusk-like mustaches. He was silent as King Log.
But the Gnome said, "I have saved up a month of talk since the last stranger came through." With ease, with simplicity of word, with I know not how much of guile, he gave fragments of his life : how he had lived in this log house always, how his first wife died, how her children were raised by this second wife and married off, how they now enjoyed this second family....
After the lady of the house rose from her sick-bed to cook for the whole clan, Lindsay considered her life:
Let us watch her at the table, breaking her corn-bread alone, her puffy eyelids closed, her cheek-bones seeming to cut through the skin. There is something of the eagle in her aspect because of her Roman nose, and her hands moving like talons. It is not corn-bread that she tears and devours. She is consuming her enemies, which are Weariness, Squalor, Flat and Unprofitable Memory, Spiritual Death. She is seeking to forget that the light of the hearthstone that falls on her dirty but beautiful babies is kindled in hell.
Sky Valley, Georgia
For decades, magazine writers had been exploiting a freakish caricature of the rustic mountaineer. I can’t decide if that’s what Lindsay was doing here at Mud Creek Flats. He had an active imagination, for sure:
Next morning was Sunday, a week since Easter. Only when a man has sadly mangled feet, and blood heated by many weeks of adventure, can he find luxury such as I found in the icy stream next morning. The divine rivulet on the far side of the field had been misnamed "Mud Creek." It was clear as a diamond….
After breakfast the wife helped the Walrus to drag the cot out of doors. When she was alone on the porch I told her how sorry I was she had been obliged to cook for me. I thanked her for her toil. But she hurried away, without a pause or a glance. She kissed one of those miry faced babies. She walked into the house, leaving me smirking at the hills. She growled something at the host. He came forth. He pointed out the road, over the mountains and far away. He broke off a blossoming applesprig and whittled it.
"So you've been to Atlanta?" he asked.
"Yes."
" I was there once. What hotel did you use ? "
"The Salvation Army."
"I was in the United States Hotel."
Still I was stupid. He continued:
"I was there two years."
He put on his glasses. He threw down the apple-sprig, and, looking over the glasses, he made unhappy each blossom in his own peculiar way. He continued: " I was in the United States Hotel, for making blockade whisky. I don't make it any more." He spat again. "I don't even go fishin' on Sunday unless —"
He had made up his mind that I was a customer, not a detective.
"Unless what?"
"Unless a visitor wants a mess of fish."
But I did not want a mess of fish. Repeatedly I offered money for my night's lodging. This he declined with real pride. He maintained his one virtue intact. And so I thought of him, just as I left, as a man who kept his code.
As he left Mud Creek Flats to walk the rest of the way to Highlands, Vachel Lindsay had plenty to think about:
I thought of the Gnome a long time. I thought of the wife, and wondered at her as a unique illustration of the tragic mysteries of the human race. If she screams when seven devils enter into the Gnome, no one outside the house will hear but the apple-tree. If she weeps, only the wind in the chimney will understand. If she seeks justice and the law, King Log, the Walrus, is her uncertain refuge. If she desires mercy, the emperor of that valley, the king above King Log, is a venomous serpent, even the Worm of the Still.
But now the road unwound in glory. I walked away from those serpent-bitten dominions for that time. I was one with the air of the sweet heavens, the light of the ever-enduring sun, the abounding stillness of the forest, and the inscrutable Majesty, brooding on the mountains, the Majesty whom ignorantly we worship.
.
Mountain View from Clayton, GA
Approaching the North Carolina state line, he diverged from the railroad and spent a precious quarter to take a stagecoach for three miles on the road leading up toward Highlands. Soon, though, the weary traveler was back on foot:
The little streams I crossed scarcely afforded me a drink. Their dried borders had the footprints of swine on them.
Lameness affects one's vision. The thick woods were the dregs of the landscape, fit haunt for the acorn-grubbing sow. The road following the ridges was a monster's spine.
Those wicked brogans led me where they should not. Or maybe it was just my destiny to find what I found.
About four o'clock in the afternoon, after exploring many roads that led to futile nothing, I was on what seemed the main highway, and drugged myself into the sight of the first mortal since daybreak. He seemed like a gnome as he watched me across the furrows. And so he was, despite his red-ripe cheeks. The virginal mountain apple-tree, blossoming overhead, half covering the toad-like cabin, was out of place. It should have been some fabulous, man-devouring devil-bush from the tropics, some monstrous work of the enemies of God.
The child, just in her teens, helping the Gnome to plant sweet potatoes, had in her life planted many, and eaten few. Or so it appeared. She was a crouching lump of earth. Her father dug the furrow. She did the planting, shovelling the dirt with her hands. Her face was sodden as any in the slums of Chicago. She ran to the house a ragged girl, and came back a homespun girl, a quick change. It must not be counted against her that she did not wash her face.
The Gnome talked to me meanwhile. He had made up his mind about me. "I guess you want to stay all night ? "
"Yes."
"The next house is fifteen miles away. You are welcome if what we have is good enough for you. My wife is sick, but she will not let you be any bother."
I wanted to be noble and walk on. But I persuaded myself my feet were as sick as the woman. I accepted the Gnome's invitation.
Lindsay had arrived at Mud Creek Flats, between Dillard and Highlands. Studying an old map, I see that what he called Mud Creek Flats is near today's Sky Valley, the resort development sprawling across an especially beautiful valley to the northwest of Rabun Bald.
We were met at the door by one my host called Brother Joseph — a towering shape with an upper lip like a walrus, for it was armed with tusk-like mustaches. He was silent as King Log.
But the Gnome said, "I have saved up a month of talk since the last stranger came through." With ease, with simplicity of word, with I know not how much of guile, he gave fragments of his life : how he had lived in this log house always, how his first wife died, how her children were raised by this second wife and married off, how they now enjoyed this second family....
After the lady of the house rose from her sick-bed to cook for the whole clan, Lindsay considered her life:
Let us watch her at the table, breaking her corn-bread alone, her puffy eyelids closed, her cheek-bones seeming to cut through the skin. There is something of the eagle in her aspect because of her Roman nose, and her hands moving like talons. It is not corn-bread that she tears and devours. She is consuming her enemies, which are Weariness, Squalor, Flat and Unprofitable Memory, Spiritual Death. She is seeking to forget that the light of the hearthstone that falls on her dirty but beautiful babies is kindled in hell.
Sky Valley, Georgia
For decades, magazine writers had been exploiting a freakish caricature of the rustic mountaineer. I can’t decide if that’s what Lindsay was doing here at Mud Creek Flats. He had an active imagination, for sure:
Next morning was Sunday, a week since Easter. Only when a man has sadly mangled feet, and blood heated by many weeks of adventure, can he find luxury such as I found in the icy stream next morning. The divine rivulet on the far side of the field had been misnamed "Mud Creek." It was clear as a diamond….
After breakfast the wife helped the Walrus to drag the cot out of doors. When she was alone on the porch I told her how sorry I was she had been obliged to cook for me. I thanked her for her toil. But she hurried away, without a pause or a glance. She kissed one of those miry faced babies. She walked into the house, leaving me smirking at the hills. She growled something at the host. He came forth. He pointed out the road, over the mountains and far away. He broke off a blossoming applesprig and whittled it.
"So you've been to Atlanta?" he asked.
"Yes."
" I was there once. What hotel did you use ? "
"The Salvation Army."
"I was in the United States Hotel."
Still I was stupid. He continued:
"I was there two years."
He put on his glasses. He threw down the apple-sprig, and, looking over the glasses, he made unhappy each blossom in his own peculiar way. He continued: " I was in the United States Hotel, for making blockade whisky. I don't make it any more." He spat again. "I don't even go fishin' on Sunday unless —"
He had made up his mind that I was a customer, not a detective.
"Unless what?"
"Unless a visitor wants a mess of fish."
But I did not want a mess of fish. Repeatedly I offered money for my night's lodging. This he declined with real pride. He maintained his one virtue intact. And so I thought of him, just as I left, as a man who kept his code.
As he left Mud Creek Flats to walk the rest of the way to Highlands, Vachel Lindsay had plenty to think about:
I thought of the Gnome a long time. I thought of the wife, and wondered at her as a unique illustration of the tragic mysteries of the human race. If she screams when seven devils enter into the Gnome, no one outside the house will hear but the apple-tree. If she weeps, only the wind in the chimney will understand. If she seeks justice and the law, King Log, the Walrus, is her uncertain refuge. If she desires mercy, the emperor of that valley, the king above King Log, is a venomous serpent, even the Worm of the Still.
But now the road unwound in glory. I walked away from those serpent-bitten dominions for that time. I was one with the air of the sweet heavens, the light of the ever-enduring sun, the abounding stillness of the forest, and the inscrutable Majesty, brooding on the mountains, the Majesty whom ignorantly we worship.
.
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