TRAMPING WITH A POETIN THE ROCKIES
TRAMPING WITH A POETIN THE ROCKIES
HAIL TO ALL MOVING THINGSI. TRAMPING AGAIN
HAIL TO ALL MOVING THINGS
Well, it’s good to be going tramping again. I’ve been sitting in European cafés and reading newspapers half a year, from Constantinople to Berlin, and I’ve only stretched my legs when in strange cities I needed to find a hotel, beating it pleasurelessly on asphalt. Last autumn, yes, I was tramping over the ruins and wreck of the war in France, and the year before that walked across Georgia on the trackof old Sherman. But with a purpose, and in lands where after all there are hotels, and one pulls the blinds down when the stars appear.
But now I’ve had a real call from Hesperus and the wilds, and am off with a knapsack and a pot and a blanket, and a free mind—yes, and, I confess, a few yards of mosquito netting. I’ve left a notice, “Not at home,” at my Soho flat, though I don’t spend much time there, anyhow; “Back in half an hour or so,” and there are already four thousand miles between my arm-chair and me.
And as I hasten to the West the link stretches, stretches. Not that my flat could ever be lasting home. Where the lady of your heart is, there is home! And where is she not? The worst thing man ever did to man was to nail him down. So hail to all things and men which move and keep moving.
I amcalled by one of the most wonderful men who ever broke silence with a song. He belongs to the same sub-species. Yes, a tramping species. His hat has got a hole in it, and so have his breeches. But he is a poet, and he sings of what the world will be whenthe years have passed away. He can charm a supper out of a farmer with a song. And I who have tramped without music know what a miracle that is. They always said to me, “Chop this wood,” or “Turn that hay,” or “If a man do not work, then neither shall he eat.”
Grande erreur, Mr. Farmer!
“Well,Ican’t take to the road,” says Mrs. Farmer. “Look at me!—it’s wuk, wuk, wuk, all day!” Mrs. Farmer was born on a Saturday. I always feel sorry for Saturday’s children. They were born a day before I was. For I was born on a Sunday. How sadly we used to intone it when we were children—“Saturday’s child workshardfor his living!” And then the relief, “But the child who is born on the good Sunday, is happy and loving and blithe and gay.” That is the tramp-baby, born on the day of rest.
I amsitting at this moment in the St. Louis train heading for Missouri. The little negro marionette with set smile and the borrowed voice of a ventriloquist has offered coffee, ice-cream, oranges, without response, and now thecar-conductor has just put into my hand a tract. It is entitled “Millions Now Living Will Never Die,” and costs 25 cents.
“The emphatic announcement that millions now living on earth will never die must seem presumptuous to many people; but when the evidence is carefully considered I believe that almost every fair mind will concede that the conclusion is a reasonable one.” So the book begins. And you who are spiritually a citizen of Missouri will doubtless require, like doubting Thomas of old, to be shown the very truth in substance and reality.
But the car-conductor has made a mistake. I have not read this book, but I believe. Though I have not seen, I believe and am blessed. And though in the Missouri train, I am not going to Missouri. I am stepping off at Flora, Illinois, to catch the Beardstown local train to Springfield, which unlike St. Louis and Jerusalem and Capernaum, and perhaps more like Tyre and Sidon, is a city of faith where they have bread from heaven to eat.
Not that I am staying in Springfield. But there I pick up the poet. That is where hehaunts—“where Lincoln dreamed in Illinois.” The poet thinks that the world could be regenerated from a centre in Illinois—this beautiful state upon which Chicago has thought fit to rear its awful form.
Some one of Illinois, not the poet, wrote to me, “What do you think of Springfield as a centre of world thought?” Now I know the craze of “Boost your home town” can be, and often is, carried to excess, and little Springfield is not even on a main line from New York. But neither is Bethlehem nor the human heart. If you want to regenerate your wicked world you can begin here and now—or, to use the language of the country, put your hand to your bosom and say it—“You can begin right here.” And then, to quote the poet himself, you will have—
Crossed the Appalachians,And turned to blazing warrior soulsOf the lazy forest.
Crossed the Appalachians,And turned to blazing warrior soulsOf the lazy forest.
Crossed the Appalachians,
And turned to blazing warrior souls
Of the lazy forest.
Springfield will not hold us. But we shall take Springfield with us. We are going to take it in our hearts and place it on the top of the Rocky Mountains, at the Triple Divide,where the waters of the new world flow north and east and west—
Going tramping again,Going to the mountains,To recapture the stars,To meet again the nymphs of the fountains.To visit the bear,To salute the eagles,To be kissed all night by wild-flowers in the grass!
Going tramping again,Going to the mountains,To recapture the stars,To meet again the nymphs of the fountains.To visit the bear,To salute the eagles,To be kissed all night by wild-flowers in the grass!
Going tramping again,
Going to the mountains,
To recapture the stars,
To meet again the nymphs of the fountains.
To visit the bear,
To salute the eagles,
To be kissed all night by wild-flowers in the grass!