DOMINICA
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.
THE MIRACLE OF MONTSERRAT
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?"
