The City of Winds
Fifty sail in the harbor,
When the white-caps swagger free—
A fishing-smack in the “Narrows,”
And a hundred more at sea.
And the spoil of the East and the South
Where scented blossoms spill,
Passing the grinding icebergs
To our town on the windy hill.
Wealth of our northern waters,
From Torbay ’round to White,
Racing in with the fog-rack
Between the hills and the “Light.”
The walls of the City of Winds
Are battered, and grim and rent;
Worried by winds and fires
And fogs that are never spent.
The heart of our City of Winds
Is light ’neath the scars and grime—
Unhurt by the hurrying flame,
Or the leisurely hands of time.
Strange men go by in the streets
Bearded from chin to eyes,
And their ships, asleep in the dock
Are dreaming of other skies.
Dreaming of palm-fringed keys
And the smell of the lands they know
And the bluster of winter winds
In the Gulf of Mexico.
Here is a fishing schooner
Of Fundy and Bank renown,
With a crew from the tide-torn Avon
And a skipper from Yarmouth town.
The brown hills lean and ponder
O’er harbor and street and square
With never a question or answer
For the trafficking people there.
Fifty sail in the harbor,
Straining to stagger free—
A mail-boat in the “Narrows,”
And a blowing of horns at sea.
A chiming of bells in the towers—
The boom of the midday gun,
And the fog-bank thins and rises
Beneath the joy of the sun.
