Chimneys redux.

This chimney can be seen at the top of the Gorton Castle:

This white pair stands atop Oak Lodge, which is a little below Vidhan Sabha, the state legislature building:

This beauty graces the roof of Yarrows:

The chimney of the tossing dream....

A chimney is a structure for venting hot flue smoke from a stove or fireplace to the outside atmosphere. Shimla has a few funny-shaped ones. mostly relics of the Colonial era, because houses here no longer have fireplaces or open stoves. Such a pity, considering that they add a je ne sais quoi to our skyline.

Although it has a slightly grim end, I've always liked this poem "Loud and Low in the Chimney" by Robert Louis Stevenson:-

Loud and low in the chimney
The squalls suspire;
Then like an answer dwindles
And glows the fire
and the chamber reddens and darkens
In time like taken breath.
Near by the sounding chimney
The youth apart
Hearkens with changing colour
And leaping heart,
And hears in the coil of the tempest
The voice of love and death.
Love on high in the flute-like
And tender notes
Sounds as from April meadows
And hillside cotes;
But the deep wood wind in the chimney
Utters the slogan of death.