You see them sitting, pipe in hand or mouth,
On benches by the store or on the green
Along the water-front, when winds are south
With now and then a muttered word between
The idle look of them does not reveal
Whether they trimmed the sails or turned the sods
In youth, or if, their knees too stiff to kneel,
They ever brood at all upon their gods.

You do not hear them call their gods by name,
Yet of how little else than these they speak
At whose capricious call of old they came,
Whose elemental tan is on their cheek.
Gods of the weather, theirs, to whose gold vane
They look for sign: “It veers to east again.”