Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Americas: Vol. XXX. 1876–79.
Port-of-Spain
By Latham Cornell Strong (1845–1879)W
Across the hills, the sun-rays glance
With hot stare through the cocoa-trees,
And wine-palms tent beside the seas,
To Port-of-Spain, long leagues away,
Just as the mellow mist of day
Was glowing in the east, there came
A wayworn man, whose feeble frame
And weary step and silent tears
Meant more of sorrow than of years.
But when he saw the seaport town,
With houses bamboo-thatched and brown,
And marked each winding lane and street,
Cool-shaded from the tropic heat,
He bent him prone upon the ground
For this,—that he at last had found
What brought a worn heart hope of rest.
The night was hot, and faint, and still,—
The moon, above the wooded hill,
A line of silver lances pressed
Across the sea-waves to the west.
The bell-bird, with metallic throat,
Sounded a dull and doleful note,
And in the distant depths of wood
The bittern broke the solitude.
But, save the sound of sea and bird,
Scarce anything the silence stirred.