Come, let us whisper of men and beasts
And joke as the aspens do,
And yet be solemn in their way,
And tell our thoughts
All summer through,
In the morning,
In the frost,
And in the midnight dew.
Sweet corn is left upon the cob, and the beef left on the bone.
Every Sunday morning, the Pilgrims give us codfish balls,
Because we keep the poisonous rats from the Boston halls.”
And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat.
“I have never seen, in the famous Hub, suppression of the rat.”
“So much the worse for Boston,” said the whiskery mountain-cat.
And the cat continued his great dream, closing one shrewd eye:
“The Tower-of-Babel Cactus blazes above the sky.
Fangs and sabers guard the buds and crimson fruits on high.
Yet cactus-eating eagles and black hawks hum through the air.
When the pigeons weep in Copley Square, look up, those wings are there,
The mountain-cat seems violent,
And of no good intent.
Yet read his words so gently
No bird will leave its tree,
No child will hate the simper or the noise
And hurry away from you and me.
Read like a meditative, catlike willow-tree.
Some words about singing this song,
Are scattered this border along.
Proud Yankee birds of prey, overshadowing the land,
Screaming to younger Yankees of the self-same brand,
Whose talk is like the American flag, snapping on the summit-pole,
Sky-rocket and star-spangled words, round sunflower words, they use them whole.
There are no tailors in command, men seem like trees in honest leaves.
Their clothes are but their bark and hide, and sod and binding for their sheaves.
Men are as the shocks of corn, as natural as alfalfa fields.
And no one yields to purse or badge; only to sweating manhood yields,
To natural authority, to wisdom straight from the new sun.
Who is the bull-god of the herd? The strongest and the shaggiest one.
Or if they preen at all, they preen with Walter Raleigh’s gracious pride:—
The forest-ranger! One grand show! With gun and spade slung at his side!
Up on the dizzy timber-line, arbiter of life and fate,
Where sacred frost shines all the year, and freezing bee and mossflower mate.
Read like the Mariposa with the stately stem,
With green jade leaves like ripples and like waves,
And white jade petals,
Smooth as foam can be—
The Mariposa lily, that is leaning upon the young stream’s hem,
Speaking grandly to that larger flower
That grows down toward the sea, hour after hour
Hunting for the Pacific storms and caves.