tampa robins

Tampa Robins was written in Tampa by famous poet Sidney Lanier, during a wintertime visit in 1877.  Here’s the poem according to the Gutenberg Project, where you can also download a biography of Sidney Lanier:

The robin laughed in the orange-tree:
“Ho, windy North, a fig for thee:
While breasts are red and wings are bold
And green trees wave us globes of gold,
Time’s scythe shall reap but bliss for me
– Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree.

Burn, golden globes in leafy sky,
My orange-planets: crimson I
Will shine and shoot among the spheres
(Blithe meteor that no mortal fears)
And thrid the heavenly orange-tree
With orbits bright of minstrelsy.

If that I hate wild winter’s spite –
The gibbet trees, the world in white,
The sky but gray wind over a grave –
Why should I ache, the season’s slave?
I’ll sing from the top of the orange-tree
`Gramercy, winter’s tyranny.’

I’ll south with the sun, and keep my clime;
My wing is king of the summer-time;
My breast to the sun his torch shall hold;
And I’ll call down through the green and gold
`Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me,
Bestir thee under the orange-tree.’”

____
Tampa, Florida, 1877.

Tampa has always been about escaping the winter, no?