Poetry
General William Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems
Vachel Lindsay · 1913
Opening lines
Booth led boldly with his big bass drum—
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
The Saints smiled gravely and they said: "He's come."
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
The founder of the Salvation Army, who died blind, enters heaven at the head of a procession gathered from the streets: lepers, ditch rowdies, alley girls, drug addicts, convicts, girls who make their banjos ring. He marches in front, beating his big drum. Each time the refrain asks whether one has been washed in the blood of the Lamb, and the margin indicates the instrument to be heard: big drum, banjos, flute. The other fifty-seven poems range from country roads and Springfield to portraits, from Lincoln to Saint Francis, and to fantasies.
Context
General Booth died in August 1912; the poem opened the magazine Poetry in January 1913, which Harriet Monroe had just founded in Chicago, and then gave its title to its author's first book, published the same year by Mitchell Kennerley. Lindsay combined in it the memory of nights spent in Salvation Army hostels and the general's autobiography. The subtitle asks that it be sung to the tune of the hymn The Blood of the Lamb, and the marginal directions make it a kind of score. At the Poetry banquet in March 1914, William Butler Yeats praised its simplicity; Charles Ives set it to music the same year.
Who it is for
The title poem is written to be spoken aloud, with rhythmic accompaniment, and silent reading gives an incomplete idea of it. The collection is not translated into French.
Prizes and reception
The poem that founded the reputation of its author; it remained one of those that audiences at his readings asked for.
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