There are dwellers in houses of steel and stone
Who list to the voice of the street.
There are seekers of ocean trails dim and lone,
Where the far horizons meet.
They are sundered apart, these two, by the space
That lies from star to star ---
The toiler who walks in the market-place
And the spirit who roves afar.
I have prayed to the God of the canyon’d lane
And the God of the off-shore breeze,
For I yearn in the fullness of time to gain
A little from each of these,
An echoing thrill from the cruising fleet ---
A boon that my place shall be,
Where the smell of the sea comes up to the street
And the street goes down to the sea.
James Quinby was
employed as an average adjuster after his graduation from Stanford Law
school in 1921 and in 1926 associated with the law firm Derby, Single and
Sharp which had relocated in San Francisco from the Hawaiian Islands in
1905. He was soon writing a regular column for a magazine called Pacific
Marine Review and eventually took to incorporating bits of verse into his
column.
Over time, there were quite a few of these
poems and a group of his associates took it upon themselves to underwrite
the cost of publishing them as a group which became known by the lead poem
"The Street and the Sea." The Law firm later became known as
Derby, Cook, Quinby and Tweedt and he practiced law until his retirement in
1976. Mr. Quinby was known for his integrity, wit and intellect. He passed
away in 1989 at the age of 95.
