The Congo and Other Poems
By Vachel Lindsay [Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Illinois Artist. 1879-1931.]


[Note on text: Due to the distinctions made by the author
between emphasis by capitalization and emphasis by use of italics,
especially in those poems intended to be read aloud,
italicized words, phrases, and sections are marked by asterisks (*).
Lines longer than 78 characters are broken, and the continuation
is indented two spaces. Also, a great many obvious errors
have been corrected. These are mostly errors in punctuation,
often inconsistent with other parts of the text -- a few were typos.]

[More notes: The `stage-directions' given in "The Congo" and those poems
which are meant to be read aloud, are traditionally printed to the right side
of the first line it refers to. This is possible, but impracticable,
to imitate in a simple ASCII text. Therefore these `stage-directions'
are given on the line BEFORE the first line they refer to, and are furthermore
indented 20 spaces and enclosed by #s to keep it clear to the reader
which parts are text and which parts directions.]

[This electronic text was transcribed from a reprint of the original edition,
which was first published in New York, in September, 1914.
Due to a great deal of irregularity between titles in the table of contents
and in the text of the original, there are some slight differences
from the original in these matters -- with the more complete titles
replacing cropped ones. In one case they are different enough
that both are given, and "Twenty Poems in which. . . ." was originally
"Twenty Moon Poems" in the table of contents -- the odd thing
about both these titles is that there are actually twenty-TWO moon poems.]