By E. B. White
When I am out of funds and sorts
And life is all in snarls,
I quit New York and travel east
To Boston on the Charles.
In Boston, life is smoother far,
It’s easier and freer,
Where every boy’s a Harvard man
And every man’s a skier.
There’s something in the Boston scene
So innocent, so tranquil,
It takes and holds my interest
The same as any bank will.
For Boston’s not a capital,
And Boston’s not a place;
Rather I think that Boston is
A sort of state of grace.
The people’s lives in Boston
Are flowers blown in glass;
On Commonwealth, on Beacon,
They bow and speak and pass.
No man grows old in Boston,
No lady ever dies;
No youth is ever wicked,
No infant ever cries.
No orthodox Bostonian
Is lonely or dejected,
For everyone in Boston
With everyone’s connected.
So intricate the pattern,
The barroom of the Ritz
Becomes a jigsaw puzzle
Each life a piece that fits.
Each Boston girl is swept along
Down the predestined channel
To where she meets a Boston boy
Alert in Brooksian flannel,
Magnificent in fallen socks,
His hair like stubble weeds,
His elbow patch an earnest of
The fellowship of tweeds.
When Muzak plays in Boston,
It wakes celestial stings,
And I can sit in Boston
And think of many things.
For Boston’s not a capital,
And Boston’s not a place;
Rather I feel that Boston is
The perfect state of grace.
After a week of Boston
I rise and take the train
And I am always very glad
To see New York again.
New York seems doubly beautiful,
Its air as clear as Heaven’s;
New York – where life is always
At sixes and at sevens,
Where no one ever marries right,
And girls go off their trolley,
And young men go to NYU,
To Fordham, and to Poly,
Where hackmen have peculiar names
And relatives afar,
And one can watch the Chrysler spire
Bisect the morning star.
