I

In a nation of one hundred fine, mob-hearted, lynching, relenting, repenting millions, There are plenty of sweeping, swinging, stinging, gorgeous things to shout about, And knock your old blue devils out.

I brag and chant of Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Candidate for president who sketched a silver Zion, The one American Poet who could sing out doors. He brought in tides of wonder, of unprecedented splendor, Wild roses from the plains, that made hearts tender, All the funny circus silks Of politics unfurled, Bartlett pears of romance that were honey at the cores, And torchlights down the street, to the end of the world. There were truths eternal in the gab and tittle-tattle. There were real heads broken in the fustian and the rattle. There were real lines drawn: Not the silver and the gold, But Nebraska’s cry went eastward against the dour and old, The mean and cold.

It was eighteen ninety-six, and I was just sixteen And Altgeld ruled in Springfield, Illinois, When there came from the sunset Nebraska’s shout of joy:-- In a coat like a deacon, in a black Stetson hat He scourged the elephant plutocrats With barbed wire from the Platte. The scales dropped from their mighty eyes. They saw that summer’s noon A tribe of wonders coming To a marching tune.

Oh the long horns from Texas, The jay hawks from Kansas, The plop-eyed bungaroo and giant giassicus, The varmint, chipmunk, bugaboo, The horned-toad, prairie-dog and ballyhoo, From all the new-born states arow, Bidding the eagles of the west fly on, Bidding the eagles of the west fly on. The fawn, prodactyl and thing-a-ma-jig, The rakaboor, the hellangone, The whangdoodle, batfowl and pig, The coyote, wild-cat and grizzly in a glow, In a miracle of health and speed, the whole breed abreast, They leaped the Mississippi, blue border of the West, From the Gulf to Canada, two thousand miles long:-- Against the towns of Tubal Cain, Ah,--sharp was their song. Against the ways of Tubal Cain, too cunning for the young, The long-horn calf, the buffalo and wampus gave tongue.

These creatures were defending things Mark Hanna never dreamed: The moods of airy childhood that in desert dews gleamed, The gossamers and whimsies, The monkeyshines and didoes Rank and strange Of the canyons and the range, The ultimate fantastics Of the far western slope, And of prairie schooner children Born beneath the stars, Beneath falling snows, Of the babies born at midnight In the sod huts of lost hope, With no physician there, Except a Kansas prayer, With the Indian raid a howling through the air.

And all these in their helpless days By the dour East oppressed, Mean paternalism Making their mistakes for them, Crucifying half the West, Till the whole Atlantic coast Seemed a giant spiders’ nest.

And these children and their sons At last rode through the cactus, A cliff of mighty cowboys On the lope, With gun and rope. And all the way to frightened Maine the old East heard them call, And saw our Bryan by a mile lead the wall Of men and whirling flowers and beasts, The bard and the prophet of them all. Prairie avenger, mountain lion, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Gigantic troubadour, speaking like a siege gun, Smashing Plymouth Rock with his boulders from the West, And just a hundred miles behind, tornadoes piled across the sky, Blotting out sun and moon, A sign on high.

Headlong, dazed and blinking in the weird green light, The scalawags made moan, Afraid to fight.