The Town Clock Gives Advice to the Tourist
"The Town Clock Gives Advice to the Tourist" by Edwina Stanton Babcock is a whimsical, affectionate poem that takes the form of a guided tour through the named streets and lanes of what appears to be a historic New England town, most likely Nantucket or a similar old coastal settlement rich in maritime heritage and Puritan history. The poem is structured as a series of short, playful stanzas, each devoted to a particular street, with the speaker — ostensibly the town clock, an authoritative and long-standing observer of local life — offering the visiting tourist both practical impressions and imaginative invitations associated with each thoroughfare. Main Street is presented as the heart of the town, a place where the full spectrum of human life and history converges: Puritan austerity, old aristocratic families, maritime artifacts, soldiers' monuments, shops, and studios all coexist. It is characterized as the place where one meets the world entire. Salem Street carries a darker, cautionary note, invoking the legacy of witch trials and the presence of law and jail, warning the tourist to tread carefully even if literal witch-burning is a thing of the past. Whale Street evokes the town's seafaring identity, encouraging the visitor to adopt a rolling sailor's gait and to imagine tall-masted ships waiting to carry them off on ocean voyages. North Water Street is saturated with salt air and nautical conversation, where every lane leads to the beach and every subject of conversation circles back to boats. Milk Street offers a gentler, domestic scene, with an old mill, rose arbors, and a sense of safe arrival, as though the street itself is a harbor of quiet charm. Pleasant Street is associated with refinement and social elegance, its brilliant door knockers gleaming, its gardens fragrant, and real ladies taking tea behind garden walls. Orange Street blends cultural cosmopolitanism with scholarly contemplation, mixing references to Japanese aesthetics, English literary romance, the smell of paint, and the presence of a learned, spiritually serene figure with great grey eyes. Centre Street is personified by the presence of a genuinely warm and gracious woman, and is noted for its communicative windows and tidy fences, conveying a sense of intimate, well-ordered community life. Lily Street is associated with natural beauty and the close of day, with honeysuckle greeting the walker like an old friend and old houses on Gull Island silhouetted against the evening sky. Quince Street is a street of cottage garden abundance — hollyhocks, apple trees, raspberries, pear trees — and hints at homespun wisdom and wit available to those perceptive enough to seek it. Joy Street, despite its name, demands a degree of sobriety and dignity from the visitor, as though the street's joyfulness is so potent it risks going to the head. Gay Street similarly calls for a measured pace, its fences draped in clematis whose star-shaped flowers shake like lace, creating an image of restrained but genuine loveliness. The poem then gestures humorously toward mercenary impulse, pointing to New Dollar Lane and Mill Street with its pirate weather vane as places for those seeking fortune, and archly mentioning a fabled Thousand Dollar Road discoverable only through careful study of maps and local lore. Stone Alley closes the tour on a note of earthy, good-humored romance, its cobblestones demanding an unsteady, careful passage, and the speaker suggesting it as an ideal spot for a chance encounter with a young woman, even if honeysuckle and birdsong prove elusive there. The poem concludes with a universal piece of advice applicable to all streets: the tourist should walk everywhere with a pleasant smile and an expectant openness, as though a dream might be waiting just around the next corner, and the poem gently promises that such a dream may indeed be found, waiting quietly by a stile. The overall tone is warm, witty, and nostalgic, celebrating the layered character of a historically rich small town through the intimate knowledge of its streets.
By Edwina Stanton Babcock · Genre: Poetry, Travel Literature, Local/Regional Literature