[Michael Juster]

Ah, I see now. That's one of many variants. The posted version is, I think, as authoritative as we have--but you'll just have to twist in your shorts until the next issue of Light to get the explanation.

[Ann Drysdale]

I can't remember when I first heard this but it was a long time ago. I have come across it as a quiz question, being asked to supply the last line.

[Claudia Gary]

Yes, but I only remembered lines 3 and 4.

Jerome's version is metrically better, in any case.

[Rob Wright]

Yes, My Grandfather (a Harvard man stalwart and hairy) was fond of it and said it once a month at least.

[Michael Cantor]

I've known this one for what seems like all my life - probably since college, and definitely long before I moved to Boston. I remember the joy I had in (eventually) realizing that Henry Cabot Lodge was of the Cabots. I also seem to remember (can't remember the name, and I'm being a good guy and not googling) that it was a tune not just a poem, written by a classy and funny gentleman who ground out dozens of similar numbers, very funny, social and political subjects, a big entertainer on the college scene in the fifties and sixties and beyond. Assuming I'm right, you probably caught him at Harvard. (He never played Cooper Union.) And I remember L3 as Jerome does.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Yes, it runs through my head any time I hear "Boston".

But I remember it thus:

And here's to dear old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots,
And the Cabots speak only with God.

I may remember it wrong, but that's how I always say it to myself.

[Woody Long]

Janice's version rings a bell with me. I imagine that popular tradition has altered the original to one form or other of "Here's to...", which is the customary introduction to a toast.

My Bartlett's, which quotes the same John Collins Bossidy original as does Wikipedia, has a footnote:

Patterned on the toast given at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Harvard Class of 1880, by a Westerner:

Here's to old Massachusetts.
The home of the sacred cod
Where the Adamses vote for Douglas
And the Cabots walk with God.

I think Bossidy as modified by tradition is the best of the lot.

— Woody