Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/210

 PANAMA

towers the old Cathedral lifts

Above the sea-walled town,—

The wild pine bristles from their rifts,

The runners dangle down;

In either turret, staves in hand,

All day the mongrel ringers stand

And sound, far over bay and land,

The Bells of Panama.

Loudly the cracked bells, overhead,

Of San Francisco ding,

With Santa Ana, La Merced,

Felípe, answering;

Banged all at once, and four times four,

Morn, noon, and night, the more and more

Clatter and clang with huge uproar

The Bells of Panama.

From out their roosts the bellmen see

The red-tiled roofs below,— 190