THE flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prarie flowers lie low:
The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass
Is swept away by wheat,
Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by
In the spring that still is sweet.
But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
Left us long ago,
They gore no more, they bellow no more
They trundle around the hills no more: —
With the Blackfeet lying low,
With the Pawnee lying low,
Lying low.
The Flower-Fed Buffaloes
Analysis, meaning and summary of Vachel Lindsay's poem The Flower-Fed Buffaloes
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The poem is about nature that is not natural. It is about how modernization has taken over our priorities, forcing nature to retreat to a lesser level.
I wnat ti know why the poet mentioned flower-fed buffaloes? what is the meaning of blooming grass?
Hey, i was wandering if any one can help me in providing me a summary or an analysis of flower fed buffaloes. plz ppl help. i have an exam day after tmroow
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thnx
welll that was harsh chinni
ppl can some one give actual analysis instead of ~~!! writing bull shit comments!!
This poem seems very simple but is actually very complicated.If you read it like once it might seem like you understand it but in reality its complex.
The poem laments the destruction of nature for man`s insatiable wants or needs.
It also laments the fact that old America is gone and that it lies low with the black feet and the pawnees.
I have just read the poem and i think it is a good boog poem because i agrree to what the poet is talking about. The poet talks about how modermnism and civilisation has the destroyed the beauty of nature. I really like the fact that the poet noticed how beauty and peaceful nature was before things started changing.
what is the rhyme scheme of this poem??
this poem is great
vachel express how slowly nature dies!
s very nostalgic
what’s the mood and tone??
This poem has got to be the most simple yet powerful poem ever. I, myself, grew up in Manchester and moved to pakistan a few weeks back, and I know exactly what lindsay means, you know, about the swaying grass, the fragrent flowers, the filtering of the sunlight. I, myself am 14 years old and all that, but i definataly think this is the most captivating poem i have come across in a long time.
Oh, man – I’m 31 years old, and I remember having to memorize this poem back in the 8th grade. I have it memorized to this day!
This poem, I believe is about how things have changed. How the natural pleasant environment has been disturbed by men now and that now after interfering nature’s system they themselves are not satisfied, even they are ‘lying low’. Disturbing nature disturbs men himself and nature’s beauty once ruined, is ruined for a long time. It takes a moment for people to finish it all and then to get it all back, even decades are not enough!!
The image of the ‘flower-fed buffalo’ is symbolic of the end of a culture that maintains the balance between man and nature; the symbiotic relationship between the environment humans. It echoes the emergence of new era of the consumer mentality which makes no provision for replenishing the natural resources of the land. The ‘wheels’ eat up the land, the ‘locomotive’ symbolising technology has replaced the buffalo and a people, race and culture is suppressed and stampeded into the silence of survival.
First of all, Lindsay is (was) a man. The flower-fed buffaloes, itself a nice example of alliteration, are a symbol of the western prairies that have been lost to expansion and settlement of whites on Blackfeet/Pawnees territory.
I think this poem is quite unique in that it treats the gradual decline of the prairies due to man’s interference as natural and inevitable. There is a sense of almost helpless nostalgia; the “flower-fed buffaloes” are portrayed as delicate and vulnerable creatures, representative perhaps of the wider natural world. Note how the “locomotives sing”, not “thunder” or “tear” through the plains as could be expected from a poem with this sort of theme. This and other images such as “wheels and wheels and wheels spin by” have no negative connotations at face value, yet we see the quite tragic effects of them later on in the poem: all but the memory of the buffaloes, which were so fundamental to the welfare of the native American Indians, have disappeared; the Blackfeet and the Pawnees themselves are “lying low”. Yet their emotional presence remains among the plains.
This is the first poem of Lindsay I have read. I think the poem is great. I like the sense of nostalgia it signifies. Our world would be a better place if we all shared her sentiments in the poem.
This poem makes me horny.
YOU HAVE A LINE MISSING FROM THIS POEM. LINE 12