Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Moon is a Mirror—Twelve Poems

Vachel Lindsay

NO man should stand before the moon,

To make sweet song thereon,

With dandified importance,

His sense of humor gone.

Nay, let him don the motley cap,

The jester’s chastened mien,

If he would woo that looking-glass

And see what should be seen.

O mirror on fair Heaven’s wall!

We find there what we bring;

So let us smile in honest part,

And deck our souls, and sing.

Yea, by the chastened jest alone

Will ghosts and terrors pass;

And fays, and merry friendly things

Throw kisses through the glass.

Where now the huts are empty,

Where never a camp-fire glows,

In an abandoned cañon

A gambler’s ghost arose.

He muttered there, “The moon’s a sack

Of dust.” His voice rose thin:

“I wish I knew the miner man;

I’d play, and play to win.

“In every game in Cripple Creek

Of old, when stakes were high,

I held my own. Now I would play

For that sack in the sky.

“The sport would not be ended there.

’Twould rather be begun.

I’d bet my moon against His stars,

And gamble for the Sun.”

The moon’s a brazen water-keg,

A wondrous water-feast.

If I could climb the sands and drink

And give drink to my beast,

If I could drain that keg, the flies

Would not be biting so,

My burning feet be spry again,

My mule no longer slow,

And I could rise and dig for ore

And reach my fatherland,

And not be food for ants and hawks,

And perish in the sand.

Two statesmen met by moonlight;

Their ease was partly feigned.

They glanced about the prairie,

Their faces were constrained.

In various ways aforetime

They had misled the state,

Yet did it so politely

Their henchmen thought them great.

They sat beneath a hedge and spake

No word, but had a smoke.

A satchel passed from hand to hand …

Next day the deadlock broke.

The moon’s a perfect city, with

Curved walls encompassed round;

With yellow palaces upreared

Upon a glittering ground.

Sometimes a disk, a planet dead;

But on this splendid night,

When all the sky is shining clear,

When my whole heart is light,

I think it is a place for friends.

My soul is there in mirth,

With golden-robed good-citizens,

Far from the dusty earth.

Hail to the perfect city then!

I love your doors and domes,

Your turrets and your palaces,

Your terraces, your homes.

Oh, see the knight in armor,

Who keeps his visor down

And charges with a moon-beam spear

On hard hearts of the town;

Who makes the shabby fountain-square

A flowering, glimmering park,

Who pierces with a sharp-sweet dream

The crabbed minds and dark;

Who conquers those who see him not,

Their brooding heads bent down;

The knight whose scarcely-heeded strokes

Have cleansed and cleared the town!

Old Euclid drew a circle

On a sand-beach, long ago.

He bounded and enclosed it

With angles thus and so.

His set of solemn greybeards

Nodded and argued much

Of arc and of circumference,

Diameter and such.

A silent child stood by them

From morning until noon,

Because they drew such charming

Round pictures of the moon.

The moon’s a cottage with a door—

Some folk can see it plain.

Look! You may catch a glint of light

A-sparkle through the pane,

Showing the place is brighter still

Within, though bright without.

There at a cosy open fire

Strange babes are grouped about:

The children of the Wind and Tide,

The urchins of the sky,

Drying their wings from storms and things

So they again can fly.

The Moon? It is a griffin’s egg,

Hatching tomorrow night;

And how the little boys will watch

With shouting and delight

To see him break the shell and stretch

And creep across the sky.

The boys will laugh, the little girls,

I fear, may hide and cry.

Yet gentle will the griffin be,

Most decorous and fat;

And walk up to the milky way

And lap it like a cat.

The Moon’s a little prairie-dog.

He shivers through the night.

He sits upon his hill and cries

For fear that I will bite.

The Sun’s a broncho. He’s afraid

Like every other thing,

And trembles morning, noon and night

Lest I should spring and sting.

The Moon’s a mirror where dim shades

Of queens are doomed to peer,

The beauteous queens that loved not love

Or faith or godly fear.

The night-wind makes their mirror grey.

The breath of Autumn drear,

And many mists of time and change

Have clouded it apace,

In mercy veiled it lest each queen

Too clearly see her face,

With long-past sins deep written there,

And ghostly rags she now must wear,

While slain men o’er her shoulders glare,

Leering at her disgrace.

The old man had his box and wheel

For grinding knives and shears.

No doubt his bell in village streets

Was joy to children’s ears.

And I bethought me of my youth

When such men came around,

And times I asked them in, quite sure

The scissors should be ground.

The old man turned and spoke to me,

His face at last in view.

And then I thought those curious eyes

Were eyes that once I knew.

“The moon is but an emery-wheel

To whet the sword of God,”

He said, “and here beside my fire

I stretch upon the sod

“Each night, and dream, and watch the stars

And watch the ghost-clouds go,

And see the sword of God in Heaven

A-waving to and fro.

“I see that sword each century, friend.

It means the world-war comes,

With all its bloody wicked chiefs

And hate-inflaming drums.

“Men talk of Peace, but I have seen

That emery-wheel turn round.

The voice of Abel cries again

To God from out the ground.

“The ditches must flow red, the Plague

Go stark and screaming by,

Each time the sword of God takes edge

Within the midnight sky.

“And those that scorned their brothers here

And sowed a wind of shame

Will reap the whirlwind as of old,

And face relentless flame.”

And thus the scissors-grinder spoke,

His face at last in view.

And there beside the railroad-bridge

I saw the Wandering Jew.

No poet spent with visions,

Bit by the City’s teeth,

Laughing at fortune, seeking

Fame and the singer’s wreath,

But must grow brave this evening,

Humming a wilder tune,

Armed against men and nations.

Why? He beholds the moon!