St. Thomas

Oddfellows once they had to trudge
O’er rough stage road to the Grand Lodge,
But now they town of metal seek
And find it on the Kettle Creek.

For industry it here prevails
As it was built by the steel rails,
And here the wide expanded bridges
Do connect the distant ridges.

No more need to stay at home as
There’s lots of railroads to St. Thomas,
You pluckily did boldly venture,
Now you are great railroad centre.

Your city now it hath high hopes
From its great railway workshops,
And higher yet it still will rise,
This seat of so much enterprise.

When young man wants a wedded mate
He seeks Alma girl graduate,
And he loves her Alma mater
For the sake of her charming daughter.

Where this text comes from

First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L20.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “St. Thomas.” First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/st-thomas/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

More by James McIntyre