Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/383

PANAMA

No more our fleet shall fear,

That sails the Mer du Nord,

This corsair crew!"

—On thy lone strand was made,

San Salvador,

One grave where two were laid

For bane or boon!

The last of all their race,

To each an equal place.

Guards well that sombre shore

The still lagoon.

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,— 353