All the smells both nice and nasty from the Pool to Barkingside,
All the harvest of the harbours from Bombay to Montreal,
There was one that took my fancy first and foremost of them all;
It was neither choice nor costly, it was neither rich nor rare
And, in most ways you can think of, it was neither here nor there,
It was nothing over-beautiful to smell nor yet to see—
Only bags of stuffy nitrate—but it meant a lot to me.
I forgot the swarming stevedores, I forgot the dust and din,
And the rattle of the winches hoisting cargo out and in,
And the rusty tramp before me with her hatches open wide,