The Tower-Of-Babel Cactus Blazes Above The Sky]

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.

“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.

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.