This poem, published 20 years after William Booth’s death, was described in a London literary journal as 'one of the greatest poems of modern times.'

The twentieth anniversary of the promotion to Glory of our Founder recalls what is doubtless the greatest poetic tribute to his memory. Its author, Vachel Lindsay, who died but a few months ago, was one of the most vivid of modern poets and is regarded as the founder of a modern school of American poetry. His masterpiece, 'General William Booth Enters Heaven,' was described in a London literary journal as 'one of the greatest poems of modern times.' It deals, said this critic,

with the raw stuff of life. . . . One is compelled to shout it in a sort of chant; it is full of fervour of a Dionysian ecstacy. . . . Its fierce strength, its relentless sincerity, has laid hold of temperaments as widely diverse as W. B. Yeats and John Masefield.

In it he has paid his tribute not only to the General, but to the Gospel, and has painted a never-to-be forgotten picture of redemption…

Lindsay presents to us first of all a great preacher of redemption. . . . There was a note of heroism in the Gospel, which he preached His creed as outlined by himself for use in The Salvation Army is refreshingly emphatic and eloquent in its simplicity.

General Booth preached a free and full Salvation. Despised and rejected among men for his words and ways, he came at last through high resolve and Christian loyalty unto honour, and his name was named among the great

It is a great picture of the redeemed. William Booth led a multitude of redeemed souls into the very presence of God. He did not go before the Throne of God empty handed. . . . When he went to Heaven he found there the children of faith whom God had given him . . . a strange company. No more strange crowd was ever gathered under one banner. . .. What is the meaning of it all? It means that the Gospel is the power of God unto Salvation to every one that believeth.

It is a picture of the Redeemer. It is not the great multitude whom no man can number which crowds the canvas. It is the Lord Himself upon whom the central light falls; it is General Booth's Saviour and not General Booth that fills the poet's page. It is the King and not the soldier to whom Heaven's highest homage is triumphantly given.

The poem was built in part upon certain adventures while singing these songs. When I was dead broke, and begging, in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S.A.), and much confused as to my next move in this world, I slept for three nights in The Salvation Army Quarters there. And when I passed through Newark, New Jersey, I slept in The Salvation Army Quarters there. . . . I know The Salvation Army from the inside. The Army was struggling with what General Booth called the submerged tenth of the population. And I was with the submerged.

General Booth went into the lowest depths of London, with malice aforethought, with deliberate intention to rescue the most notoriously degraded, those given up by policeman, physician, preacher, and charity worker. . . He wanted to find those so low there were none lower. He put them into uniform. He put them under military discipline. He put them in authority over one another. He chose them musical instruments and their astonishing tunes. The world has forgotten what a scandal to respectable religion the resulting Army was when it began. It was like the day St. Francis handed all his clothes to the priest, or the day he cut off the hair of St. Clara.

I set (my poem) to a tune that is not a tune, but a speech, a refrain used most frequently in the Meetings of The Army on any public square to this day.