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

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PANAMA

Two 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,—

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