Life, 1911-02-16 · page 25 of 44
Life — February 16, 1911 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a serious poetic essay by Reginald Wright Kauffman, not satire. It celebrates westward expansion as humanity's eternal drive—a "goad" (driving force) pushing civilization from East to West. The poem traces Western expansion from ancient times (Phoenicians, Trojans, Goths, Norse) through Columbus, De Soto, Magellan, and Drake, culminating in American western settlement. It romanticizes conquest as inevitable human impulse, describing how expansion "splashed the blood" of indigenous peoples and "hunger-hardened prairie-men." The epigraph from Zechariah and the paired woodcuts—"The Morning Star" (Eastern origin, a pagoda) and "The Evening Star" (Western destination, sailing ships)—frame expansion as cosmic destiny: "Till Orient is Occident, till all the East and West are one." This reflects early 20th-century American triumphalism about manifest destiny and Western civilization's superiority. Modern readers would recognize it as propaganda for imperial expansion, not satire critiquing it.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE MORNING. STAR The Western Goad BY REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFPMAN “ And the toward the “W [WARD!” the Aryan chieftain cried, when daylight smouldered from the West, And thence, across the Ural peaks, began mankind’s cternal quest. Westward the swart Phoenicians plunged through bays un- known and seas unwon; And westward fought from burning Troy, Anchises’ son. to build a world, The Goths that cursed in templed Rome; the Vandal riders Jing Spain; The blond Norse conquerors that slew the Frankish lord, the Saxon thane; Columbus in his cockleshell ; De Soto grim, who saw and died; Magellan; Drake the buccaneer—the ancient spur was in their side; i Se Mount of Olives shall cleave East and toward the West. in the midst thereof "—Zech., XVI: 4. It splashed the blood of all that hewed, comers’ ken, Their forest-way; it stabbed the flanks of hunger-hardened prairie-men ; : It urged the bandaged feet across the Rockies, won Sierra gold, Till now it pauses at the shore past which the New becomes the Old: beyond the earlier For but a breathing space! In man, who neither may retreat nor stay, Though wet with sweat and dripping red, has its way: Careless of life and cager-eyed, the race pursues the recreant sun, Till Orient is Occident, till all the East and West are one. the primal impulse comicbooks.com