Lindsay's The Traveller-Heart
A Burial Preference
Vachel Lindsay’s “The Traveller-Heart” offers a rebuttal to the sentiment expressed in his epigraph: “To a Man who maintained that the Mausoleum is the Stateliest Possible Manner of Interment.”
First Stanza: “I would be one with the dark, dark earth”
Unlike the unidentified man who claimed that being interred in a mausoleum was the “Stateliest Possible Manner of Interment,” the speaker who has a traveler’s heart finds the old-fashioned earth burial more suitable to his wandering ways. Instead of resting in a cold marble facility, the speaker prefers to be “one with the dark, dark earth.” But he will not rest in that earth, he plans to “follow the plough with a yokel tread.”
The speaker dramatizes the molecules of his decomposed body as they become part of the soil. But his imagination continues as he becomes the nutrients in “part of the Indian corn.” He fantasizes his wish to be “Walking the rows with the plumes o'erhead.”
Second Stanza: “I would be one with the lavish earth”Again, the speaker stresses his desire to be “one with the lavish earth.” He likes the idea of his atoms “eating the bee-stung apples” and “walking where lambs walk on the hills.” With the sheep and the bees, his particles will be steered through “oak-grove paths to pools” of water.
Third Stanza: “I would be one with the dark-bright night”
On stormy nights with lightening in the skies, his atoms will mix with the “vicious wind.” But he has the advantage over dogs, in that he can remain part of the scene from which “the dogs have fled.” So not only does the speaker anticipate being one with earth, but he will also be able to float up from it on occasion.
Fourth Stanza: “I would be one with the sacred earth”
The speaker again repeats that he “would be one with the sacred earth.” And he will remain this way until “[he] sleep[s] with the dead.” Here he contemplates the state of his soul, and he understands that “Terror shall put no spears through me. / Peace shall jewel my shroud instead.”
Fifth Stanza: “I shall be one with all pit-black things”
The speaker then fancies that when he is in his grave in the earth, he will be “one with all pit-black things.” But he will not despair the darkness, because he imagines he will have “stars for [his] pillow there in the gloom, — / Oak-roots arching about [his] head!”
Sixth Stanza: “Stars, like daisies, shall rise through the earth”
The stars will be “daisies” and will “rise through the earth.” Nuts from the oak tree will fall “round [his] breast.” Children will be present, “weav[ing] there a flowery chain,” while squirrels eat the acorns.
Seventh Stanza: “Fruit of the traveller-heart of me”
The speaker imagines his desire to be a wanderer will be fulfilled by being buried and becoming one with the dynamic earth. In death, his soul will reap the “fruit of the traveller-heart of me.” His body will become “fruit of [his] harvest-songs” and “sweet with the life of [his] sunburned days.” He dramatizes his body’s return to the soil, as his soul feasts on all the delights of sweetness and light the “sacred earth” and the after-death experience can offer.
Squirrel Eating Acorn
|
More in Reading & Literature
Latest Articles