How does "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes" by Vachel Lindsay convey the feelings about human destruction of the natural world?Need it today!

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.