| |
| WHAT songs found voice upon those lips, | |
| What magic dwelt within the pen, | |
| Whose music into silence slips, | |
| Whose spell lives not again! | |
| |
| For her the clamorous to-day | 5 |
| The dreamful yesterday became; | |
| The brands upon dead hearths that lay | |
| Leaped into living flame. | |
| |
| Clear ring the silvery Mission bells | |
| Their calls to vesper and to mass; | 10 |
| O’er vineyard slopes, through fruited dells, | |
| The long processions pass; | |
| |
| The pale Franciscan lifts in air | |
| The Cross above the kneeling throng; | |
| Their simple world how sweet with prayer, | 15 |
| With chant and matin-song! | |
| |
| There, with her dimpled, lifted hands, | |
| Parting the mustard’s golden plumes, | |
| The dusky maid, Ramona, stands | |
| Amid the sea of blooms. | 20 |
| |
| And Alessandro, type of all | |
| His broken tribe, for evermore | |
| An exile, hears the stranger call | |
| Within his father’s door. | |
| |
| The visions vanish and are not, | 25 |
| Still are the sounds of peace and strife,— | |
| Passed with the earnest heart and thought | |
| Which lured them back to life. | |
| |
| O sunset land! O land of vine, | |
| And rose, and bay! in silence here | 30 |
| Let fall one little leaf of thine, | |
| With love, upon her bier. | |
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