What is the main theme in Vachel Lindsay's "The Flower-fed Buffaloes"?

Like any poem or piece of literature, it is the reader’s interpretation. But here is the gist. This poem is a bit tricky because it seems to be lamenting the life of rustic prairie of the past and the foreboding industrialization of the future. But, there are verbal cues that let you know that this poem is actually about nostalgia for the past and hope for the future.

The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prairie flowers lie low: (1-4)

The first two lines use the past tense and they are nostalgic. The buffaloes used to roam here. The next two lines are present tense. The locomotives “sing.” They don’t roar or crunch. Using “sing” might be sarcastic but I don’t think that’s the case here. It seems like “sing” is used to mark the presence of the locomotive as useful or pleasant. And although the buffalo may be gone, the prairie flowers are still here. This fact will be important later in the poem.

In the next four lines, the wheels spin by in “the spring that’s still sweet.” Things have changed but the prairie is still sweet.

The next two lines repeat the nostalgic lament.

But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
Left us long ago, (9-10)

The word choices in the next line can be interpreted in one of two ways. If the buffalo “gore” and “bellow” no more, this could mean that their absence is an unfortunate but necessary part of the evolution of history. Also, and this interpretation is more accepted, since the buffalo are gone, they are no longer being slaughtered. They are better off now. Native Americans may have played a major role in killing them off, but westward expansion would have pushed the buffalo and the Native Americans out anyway.

This brings us to the final two lines.

With the Blackfeet lying low,
With the Pawnee lying low. (12-13)

There are no more buffalo to kill. But these last two lines echo the sentiment about the prairie flowers. The buffalo may be gone but the flowers, Blackfeet and Pawnee are still there. So, there are still traces of the past despite the onward marching of the locomotive of the future. This poem looks back fondly and looks forward hopefully . You may even interpret the semblance between the flowers and the Blackfeet and Pawnee as a plea to keep what remains of the prairie’s past. Linsay was relatively liberal for his time, so I would wager to say that he was commenting on the dwindling Native American population.

In "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes," Vachel Lindsay is singing a lament (i.e., a mournful song of sorrow)  in poetry for the buffalo which were driven off or hunted to extinction by the advent of the power of Western civilization's Industrial Revolution and the engines it porduced. Lindsay's intent is to mourn the passing of the buffalo and all that sustained them, the "prairie flowers" and the "perfumed grass," along with all those whom they sustained, the "Blackfeet" and the "Pawnee" tribes, now "lying low." Lindsay's intent is bound up with his message, which is that while Western civilization progresses forward and gives increasing opportunity to Western people, there is a cost attached to the forward push in which "locomotives sing" and the natural environment is "swept away by wheat." The cost is in reduced life and freedom for animals, the buffalo; flora, the prairie flowers; natural habitat, the "tossing, blooming, perfumed grass"; and other human beings, non-Western human beings:

With the Blackfeet lying low,
With the Pawnee lying low.

How would you explain "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes" by Vachel Lindsay?

One of my favorite American poems, Vachel Lindsay's "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes" describes a time and an area of the Old West which lives on under totally different circumstances. Across the American prairies of the Midwest where buffalo and Indians once roamed there now lies highways traveled by automobiles and 18-wheelers ("Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by"). Cars and trucks have replaced horses and locomotives as the transportation of its inhabitants, and the only Native Americans still there are buried ("...Blackfeet lying low, / With the Pawnee lying low."). Some of the beauty remains, where wheat has replaced the "perfumed grass," and "spring that still is sweet." But the old days are gone. The buffalo, worshipped by the Indian as a source of meat and protection, "left us long ago"--shot to extinction by hunters who provided meat for the men who laid the track for the same locomotives that have now nearly disappeared. Like the Blackfeet and Pawnee, the only buffaloes left in the area are now "lying low" beneath the fields of wheat.

The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prairie 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:--
With the Blackfeet lying low,
With the Pawnee lying low.

What is the theme of natural world destruction in "The Flower-fed Buffaloes" by Vachel Lindsay?

In "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes," Vachel Lindsay mourns the disappearance of buffaloes from the American environment.   Millions of buffalo (or, perhaps more correctly, bison) were slaughtered in the 19th century.

Lindsay romanticizes the buffalo by referring to them as "flower-fed," thus contrasting them with the environment that replaced them: locomotives, wheat fields, and "Wheels and wheels and wheels spin[ning] by."

Lindsay also portrays some aspects of the buffalo that might be considered negative: "They gore no more, they bellow no more..."

The last three lines of the poem could be interpreted in different ways:

They gore no more, they bellow no more:--
With the Blackfeet lying low,
With the Pawnee lying low.

What does Lindsay mean to say about the two tribes, the Blackfeet and the Pawnee, "lying low."  Does he mean that members of these tribes used to lie low when they hid themselves while hunting for buffalo?  Or does he mean that  these tribes, along with the herds of buffalo, have been greatly depleted?  There are historians who maintain that the U.S. government encouraged the slaughter of buffalo in order to drive away the Native Americans who depended on them for their livelihood (but who, it should be noted, did not seriously deplete the herds, despite having hunted them for centuries).

When this poem starts out, it seems like it is going to be nostalgic for a pastoral past and lament of industrialized future. But this is not the case here. The locomotives “sing.” Lindsay could’ve chosen to use “roar” or “crunch.” Using “sing,” he shows that this historical progression is not necessarily bad. The railways will destroy some of the prairie, but this isn’t inherently bad. He notes that the “spring is still sweet” amidst the rolling of the wheels. The flower-fed buffalo of the past are gone and the Native Americans who preyed on them are also gone. Word choice is important here. The buffalo are gone and so they don’t “gore” or “bellow” anymore. Lindsay is making the point that to savor a memory of this rustic America, but it is also a savage past and historical progress can be optimistic. When things are destroyed or lost, others are created.

The prairie flowers, the Pawnee and the Blackfeet are not gone. But they lie low, which means that they are not a part of this landscape anymore but their memory is. With the descriptions of the buffalo “goring” on the flowers, and the locomotive “singing,” we get the implication that this historical transition is not some evil human destruction of the natural world. It is just progress and should be interpreted optimistically. By mentioning the Pawnee and Blackfeet who hunted buffalo, Lindsay may have been doing one (or two things). First, since the hunt is a savage, violent image, this part of the past is not to be lamented since the buffalo were nearly wiped out. So, trading transportation for a hunt towards extinction is not necessarily bad. Lindsay might also have been connoting “Indian” with “savage,” which by today’s perspective would be racist or stereotypical. Then again, their decrease in population, due to Western expansion, disease and war with European Americans in the 19th century could be compared to the loss of buffalo and the industrialization of the prairie.

Overall, this poem symbolizes the past as beautiful but violent. As for the future, the glass is half-full.

Vachel Lindsay's "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes" speaks of the destruction of nature by comparing "days of long ago" to contemporary days where now "locomotives" and the lost and gone "prarie flowers lie low," or have ceased to be. He further says the prairie's "perfumed grass" has been "swept away" by the cultivated farmland fields of wheat that is planted, grown and carried away at harvest by "wheels and wheels and wheels" that "spin by." He ends this poem by saying the buffalo themselves "gore no more [and] bellow no more," for they, along with the Blackfeet and Pawnee Indian tribes of the prairie are now "lying low," side by side with the prairie flowers.

Boey Kim Cheng's "Report to Wordsworth," which begins with a summons to Wordsworth ("You should be here ..."), speaks of the destruction of nature by enumerating things by which nature "has been laid waste": "smog," "waste we dump," "insatiate man." Cheng lists the effects upon nature of these waste layers, using mighty and original--and seemingly contradictory--imagery to show the destruction: e.g., "flowers are mute," Neptune is "helpless as beached as a whale," "Nature's mighty heart is ... still." Cheng ends this sonnet by describing the "wound" in the sky and God's labors to "utter his last cry," thus equating God with nature and reflecting Romantic era sensibilities about the preeminence of nature.