  Some words about singing this song, 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, “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. [Image unavailable.] THE BOSTON MOUSE WAITS IN TERROR OF THE MOUNTAIN-CAT, UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE STORM-ROSE Come, let us whisper of men and beasts 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, Some words about singing this song, 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. 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, “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, 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, 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, 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. 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. With shoulders hot with sunburn, with bodies rose and white, And streaming curls like sunrise rays, or curls like flags of night, Flowing to their dancing feet, circling them in storm, And their adorers glory in each lean, Ionic form. That chickadees and bobcats sing, the famous Age of Gold.... They sleep and star-gaze on the grass, their red-ore camp fires shine, Like heaps of unset rubies spilled on velvet superfine. And love of man and maid is when the granite weds the snow-white stream. The ranch house bursts with babies. In the wood-lot deep eyes gleam, Buffalo children, barking wolves, fuming cinnamon bears. Human mustangs kick the paint from the breakfast-table chairs.” And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat. “I have never heard, in the modest Hub, of a stock ill-bred as that.” “So much the worse for Boston,” said the lecherous mountain-cat. And the cat continued with the dream, as the snow blew round in drifts. For many youths that enter there, and lift up every stone that lifts. They wander in, and wander on, finding all new things they can, Some forms of jade or chrysoprase, more rare than radium for man. And the burro trains, to fetch the loot, are jolly fool parades. The burros flap their ears and bray, and take the steepest grades. Or loaded with long mining-drills, and railroad rails, and boards for flumes, Up Beacon Hill with fossil bats, swine bones from geologic tombs, Or loaded with cliff-mummies of lost dwellers of the land. Explorers’ yells and bridle bells sound above the sand. “In the desert of my beauty-sleep, when rainflowers Will not bloom, In the Boston of my beauty-sleep, when storms Will not bloom, By Bunker Hill’s tall obelisk, till the August sun awakes, I brood and stalk blue shadows, and my mad heart breaks. Thoughts of a hunt unutterable ring the obelisk around. And a thousand glorious sphinxes spring, singing, from the ground. Very white young Salem witches ride them down the west. The gravel makes a flat, lone track, the eye has endless rest. Fair girls and beasts charge, dreaming, through the salt-sand white as snow, Hunting the three-toed pony, while mysterious slaughters flow. And the bat from the salt desert sucks the clouds on high Until they fall in ashes, and all the sky is dry. Oh, the empty Spanish Missions, where the bells ring without hand, As we drive the shadowy dinosaurs and mammoths through the sand.” And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat. “So much the worse for you, my cub,” said the slant-eyed mountain-cat. And the cat continued with his yarn, while I stood there marveling:— “I here proclaim that I am not a vague, an abstract thing. I like to eat the turkey-leg, the lamb, the chickenwing. Yet the cat that knows not fasting, the cat that knows not dream, That has not drunk dim mammoth-blood from the long-dead desert stream, That has not rolled in the alkali-encrusted pits of bones By the saber-toothed white tiger’s cave, where he kicked the ancient stones, Has not known sacred Boston. Our gods are burning ore. Our Colorado gods are the stars of heaven’s floor. But the god of Massachusetts is a Tiger they adore. “From that saber-tooth’s ghost-purring goes the whispered word of power That an Indian chief is born, in a teepee, to the west, That a school of rattlesnakes is rattling, on the mountain’s breast, That an opal has been grubbed from the ground by a mole, That a bumble-bee has found a new way to save his soul. In Egyptian granite Boston, the rumor has gone round That new ways to tame the whirlwind have been marvelously found. That a Balanced Rock has fallen, that a battle has been won In the soul of some young touch-me-not, some tigerish Emerson.” And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat. “Boston people do not read their Emerson like that.” “So much the worse for Boston,” said the self-reliant cat. A prophet-beast of Nature’s law, staring with stony will, Pacing on the icy top, then stretched in drowsy thought, Then, listening, on tiptoe, to the voice the snowwind brought, Tearing at the fire-killed pine trees, kittenish again, Then speaking like a lion, long made president of men:— “There are such holy plains and streams, there are such sky-arched spaces, There are life-long trails for private lives, and endless whispering places. Range is so wide there is not room for lust and poison breath And flesh may walk in Eden, forgetting shame and death.” And then I contradicted him, in a manner firm and flat. “I have never heard, in Boston, of anything like that.” “Boston is peculiar. You do not know your Boston,” said the wise, fastidious cat, And turned again to lick the skull of his prey, the mountain-rat! And at that, he broke off his wild dream of a perfect human race. And I walked down to the aspen grove where is neither time nor place, Nor measurement, nor space, except that grass has room And aspen leaves whisper on forever in their grace. All day they watch along the banks. All night the perfume goes From the Mariposa’s chalice to the marble mountain-rose, In the Boston of their beauty-sleep, when storm-flowers Are in bloom, In the mystery of their beauty-sleep, when storm-flowers Are in bloom. |
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