“Boston is tough country, and the ranger rides with death,
Plunges to stop the forest fire against the black smoke’s breath,
Buries the cattle killed by eating larkspur lush and blue,
Shoots the calf-thieves, lumber-thieves, and gets train-robbers too.
Some words about singing this song,
Are scattered this border along.
Governor and Sheriff obey his ordering hand,
Following his ostrich plume across the amber sand.
“But often, for lone days he goes, exploring cliffs afar,
And chants his King James’ Bible to tarantula and star.
I hear him read Egyptian tales, as he rides by in the dawn.
I am sometimes an Egyptian cat. My crudities are gone.
He spells, in Greek, that Homer, as he hurries on alone.
I hear him scan at Virgil, as I hide behind a stone.
“He had kept me fond of Hawthorne, and Thoreau, cold and wise.
The silvery waves of Walden Pond, gleam in a bobcat’s eyes.
He has taught us grateful beasts to sing, like Orpheus of old.
The Boston forest ranger brings back the Age of Gold.”
And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat.
“I have never heard, in the cultured Hub, of rowdy men like that.”
“So much the worse for Boston,” said the Rocky Mountain cat.
Sing like the Mariposa to the stream that seeks the sea,
Speak like that flower,
With still,
Olympian jest,
And cuplike word
Filling the hour.
And the cat purred on, in his great dream, as one who seeks the noblest ends:—
“Higher than the Back Bay whales, that spout and leap, and bite their friends,
Higher than those Moby-Dicks, the Boston Lover’s trail ascends.
Higher than the Methodist, or Unitarian spire,
Beyond the range of any fence of bowlder or barbed wire,
Telling to each other what the Boston Boys have done,
The lodge-pole pines go towering to the timber-line and sun.
And their whisper stirs love’s fury in each pantherish girl-child,
Till she dresses like a columbine, or a bleeding heart gone wild.
Like a harebell, golden aster, bluebell, Indian arrow,
Blue jay, squirrel, meadow lark, loco, mountain sparrow.
Mayflower, sagebrush, dying swan, they court in disarray.
The masquerade, in Love’s hot name, is like a forest-play.
And she is held in worship who adores the noblest boys.
So miner-lovers bring her new amazing pets and toys.
Mewing, prowling hunters bring her grizzlies in chains.
Ranchers bring red apples through the silver rains.
In the mountain of my beauty-sleep, when storm-flowers
Are in bloom,
The Boston of my beauty-sleep, when storm-flowers
Are in bloom.
There are just such naked waterfalls, as are roaring there below.
For the springs of Boston Common are from priceless summer snow.
Serene the wind-cleared Boston peaks, and there white rabbits run
Like funny giant snowflakes, hopping in the sun.
The ptarmigan will leap and fly and clutter through the drift
And the baby ptarmigans ‘peep, peep,’ when the weasel eyelids lift.
And where the pools are still and deep, dwarf willows see themselves,
And the Boston Mariposas bend, like mirror-kissing elves.
White is the gypsum cliff, and white the snowbird’s warm, deep-feathered home,
White are the cottonwood and birch, white is the fountain-foam.
“In the waterfalls from the sunburnt cliffs, the bold nymphs leap and shriek
The wrath of the water makes them fight, its kisses make them weak.