Page:Poet Lore, volume 28, 1917.djvu/479

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To fling a crumpled parchment on her board Was the response Columbus made Castille, Hoping to show what words could not reveal: Had he been Neptune, not his bravest lord, He would have tumbled high the seas and poured Them at her feet to writhe like molten steel Bubbling with wrack of palm and manchineel, Tree-ferns, lianas and the yucca's sword.

You, that were torn from Ocean's very heart, Have not outgrown your birth-throes, never will: Your surface billows up to burst apart In sudden rainbowed chasms; vaporous blasts Smoke from your crests and spume the scalloped hill; Your forests swim a ghostly gulf of masts.

I saw few signs of tropic glamor here And much grey poverty for all your limes, But cause to smile and chuckle many times: Over the self-appointed privateer Who played my guide, his brogue, and at the cheer I got skipping the rope to children's rhymes; Over the irony of Romish chimes Changing in any Plymouth —name severe!

And yet this town, gloomy enough to please The glummest Puritan, shines out as none, Yes, like an altar-lamp; for, in the feeze Of boarding, of the two shillings paid, one Was returned. Could it have been the breeze Which murmured so gently "My son . . . my son?"