By my camp fire I grew older,
There were chipmunks on my shoulder,
While I saw the world,
With the eyes of my boat,
As one land,
With Asia and Alaska by the ice bound as one,
The Aurora Borealis was a cross bright as the sun.
I seemed to live through myriad days.
My eyes looked down like searching rays.
I took my flight over many races,
I saw, in my thought, all human faces.
And my spirit had its fill.
And the thread in my wrist wound in again
The cobweb shortened, strand on strand,
And my little ship came back to land
And was only a feather in my hand.
SO MUCH THE WORSE FOR BOSTON
Some words about singing this song,
Are written this border along.
I read the aspens like a book, and every leaf was signed,
And I climbed above the aspen-grove to read what I could find
On Mount Clinton, Colorado, I met a mountain-cat.
I will call him “Andrew Jackson,” and I mean no harm by that.
He was growling, and devouring a terrific mountain-rat.
But when the feast was ended, the mountain-cat was kind,
And showed a pretty smile, and spoke his mind.
“I am dreaming of old Boston,” he said, and wiped his jaws.
“I have often HEARD of Boston,” and he folded in his paws,
“Boston, Massachusetts, a mountain bold and great.
I will tell you all about it, if you care to curl and wait.
If I cannot sing in the aspens’ tongue,
If I know not what they say,
Then I have never gone to school,
And have wasted all my day.
“In the Boston of my beauty-sleep, when storm-flowers are in bloom,
When storm-lilies and storm-thistles and storm-roses are in bloom,
The faithful cats go creeping through the catnip-ferns,
And rainbows, and sunshine, and gloom,
And pounce upon the Boston Mice, that tremble underneath the flowers,
And pounce upon the big-eared rats, and drag them to the tomb.
For we are Tom-policemen, vigilant and sure.
We keep the Back Bay ditches and potato cellars pure.
Apples are not bitten into, cheese is let alone.
