THE GHOSTS OF THE BUFFALOES 1 Last night at black midnight I woke with a cry, I rushed to the dooryard. The city was gone. It was mud-smear and logs near a whispering stream, Then.. Ghost-kings came headlong, row upon row, They mounted the bear and the elk and the deer, They rode long-horn cattle, they cried "A-la-la." A red-god show, "A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la." With bodies like bronze, and terrible eyes Came the rank and the file, with catamount cries, 1 Reprinted from Collected Poems by Vachel Lindsay, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company. Power and glory that sleep in the grass While the winds and the snows and the great rains pass. They crossed the gray river, thousands abreast, They rode out in infinite lines to the west, Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam, The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled, And on past those far golden splendors they whirled. They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep, An owl said: "Hark, what is a-wing?" I heard a cricket carolling, I heard a cricket carolling, I heard a cricket carolling. Then ... Snuffing the lightning that crashed from on high Rose royal old buffaloes, row upon row. The lords of the prairie came galloping by. A red-god show, A red-god show, A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la." Buffaloes, buffaloes, thousands abreast, A Scourge and amazement, they swept to the west. Goring the laggards, shaking the mane, Pompous and owlish, shaggy and wise. Like sea-cliffs and caves resounded their ranks The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled, I heard a cricket's cymbals play, A scarecrow lightly flapped his rags, And a pan The wind in the chimney, The wind in the chimney, The wind in the chimney, Seemed to say:— To dream is the work Of beast or man. Life is the west-going dream-storm's breath, Life is a dream, the sigh of the skies, The breath of the stars, that nod on their pillows The locust played on his musical wing, Sang to his mate of love's delight. I heard the whippoorwill's soft fret. I heard a cricket carolling, I heard a cricket say: "Good-night, good-night, Edwin Meade Robinson (no relation to Edwin Arlington Robinson) was born November 1, 1879, in Lima, Indiana. He engaged in newspaper work when he was scarcely out of his 'teens, joining the staff of the Indianapolis Sentinel in 1901. He began writing a daily poem in 1904 and, for years, has conducted a column of prose and verse in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Mere Melodies (1918) is a collection of Robinson's light and sentimental verse, an uneven collection. Piping and Panning (1820) is a much fresher and far more vigorous assembling of this versifier's humorous and burlesque idioms. One of our most adroit technicians, he is especially happy in interior rhyming; the poem "Halcyon Days" contains, beside the end-rhymes, rhymes hidden within the lines and others running over from line to line. "HALCYON DAYS" Ere yet the giants of modern science had gone a-slumming in smelly slums, And through the Ghettos and lazarettos had put in plumbing (and pulled out plums!) When wily wizards in inky vizards employed their talents at homicide, And poisoned goblets for faithless squablets by knightly gallants were justified; When maids were fairest, and baths were rarest, and thau maturgy was wrought by dames, When courts were rotten and faith forgotten, and none but clergy could write their names— When he who flouted the Church, or doubted, would find his neck fast in hempen ruff, And saint and sinner thought eggs for dinner and beer for breakfast the proper stuff; When men were scary of witch and fairy, of haunted castle, of spook and elf, When every mixer of cough-elixir was thought a vassal of Nick himself; When income taxes and prophylaxis and Comic Sections were yet unborn, When Leagues of Nations and Spring Vacations and Fall Elections were held in scorn When all brave fellows would fight duellos with sword and dagger, with lance and mace, When good men guzzled until, clean fuzzled, they'd reel and stagger about the place; When pious journeys and jousts and tourneys brought high adventure and secret tryst, When knives were many, but forks not any-'twas fist to trencher, and mouth to fist! Oh, men had chances for true romances, for fame and glory, and knightly acts . . . (And childish quarrels and beastly morals, if song and story would stick to facts!) Franklin P. Adams Franklin Pierce Adams, better known to the readers of his column as F. P. A., was born in Chicago, Illinois, November 15, 1881. He attended the University of Michigan (1899-1900) and, after a brief career as an insurance agent, plunged into journalism. Adams had already been an ardent contributor to B. L. T.'s "A Line o' Type or Two" and, in 1903, he began conducting a column of his own on the Chicago Journal. Late in 1904, he came to New York, running his "Always in Good Humor" section on The Evening Mail until 1914, when he started "The Conning Tower" for the New York Tribune, transferring it some years later to the New York World. Adams is the author of six volumes of a light verse that is unusually skilful. Tobogganing on Parnassus (1909), In Other Words (1912), By and Large (1914), Weights and Measures (1917) Something Else Again (1920) and So There (1923) reveal a spirit which is essentially one of mockery. One admires these books for their impudent-and faithful-paraphrases of Horace and |