Debris

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Title: Debris
Selections from Poems
Author: Madge Morris
Release Date: June 22, 2005 [eBook #16108]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
DEBRIS***
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)
DEBRIS
Selections from Poems
by
MADGE MORRIS
Sacramento
H. S. Crocker & Co., Printers
1881
_To the one who, reading, may fancy--
With a kindly thought for
me--
There's a grain of gold in its driftings,
I dedicate this
"Debris."_

PREFACE
The waif is born of emergency, and timidly launched on the rough sea
of opinion. Critic, touch it gently; it assumes nothing--has nothing to
assume; and your scalpel can only pain its
AUTHOR
CONTENTS
Mystery of Carmel
Wasted Hours
Rocking the Baby
"I Don't
Care"
A Stained Lily
A Valentine
Which One
Life's Way

Uncle Sam's Soliloquy
Nay, Do Not Ask
A Picture
Hang Up
Your Stocking
Opening the Gate for Papa
White Honeysuckle

Estrangement
Bring Flowers
Good-Bye
In the Twilight
Home

Why?
Out in the Cold
To Jennie
Watching the Shadows
I
Give Thee Back Thy Heart
Light Beyond
A Neglected "Woman's
Right"
Would You Care?
A Thought of Heaven
Consolance

When the Roses Go
The Difference
Beware
A Regret
"It is Life
to Die"
O, Speak it Not
A Shattered Idol
Poor Little Joe
Fate

The Ghosts in the Heart
Only a Tramp
Put Flowers on My Grave

Old Aunt Lucy
Unspoken Words
O! Take Away Your Flowers


Rain
I love Him for His Eyes
Only
Somebody's Baby's Dead

The Withered Rosebud
My Ships Have Come From Sea
MYSTERY OF CARMEL.
The Mission floor was with weeds o'ergrown,
And crumbling and
shaky its walls of stone;
Its roof of tiles, in tiers and tiers,
Had stood
the storms of a hundred years.
An olden, weird, medieval style

Clung to the mouldering, gloomy pile,
And the rhythmic voice of the
breaking waves
Sang a lonesome dirge in its land of graves.
As I
walked in the Mission old and gray--
The Mission Carmel at Monterey.

An ancient owl went fluttering by,
Scared from his haunt. His
mournful cry
Wakened the echoes, till roof and wall
Caught and
re-echoed the dismal call
Again and again, till it seemed to me

Some Jesuit soul, in mockery--
Stripped of rosary, gown, and cowl--

Haunted the place, in this dreary owl.
Surely I shivered with fright
that day,
Alone in the Mission, old and gray--
The Mission Carmel at Monterey.
Near the chapel vault was a dungeon grim,
And they say that many a
chanted hymn
Has rung a knell on the moldy air
For luckless errant
prisoned there,
As kneeling monk and pious nun
Sang orison at set
of sun.
A single window, dark and small,
Showed opening in the
heavy wall,
Nor other entrance seemed attained
That erst had
human footstep gained.
I paused before the uncanny place
And
peered me into its darksome space.
Had it of secret aught to tell,

That locked up darkness kept it well.
I turned, and lo! by my side
there stood
A being of strangest naturehood.
Startled, I glanced him
o'er and o'er,
Wondering I noted him not before.
His form was
stooped with the weight of years,
And on his cheek was a trace of
tears;
Over all his face a shade of pain
That deepened and vanished,
and came again.
Fixed he his woeful eyes on me--
Through my very
soul they seemed to see.
And lightly he laid his hand on mine--
His
hand was cold as the vestal shrine.
"'Tis haunted," he said, "haunted,
and he
Who dares at night-noon go with me
To this cursed place,
by phantoms trod,
Must fear not devil, man, nor God."
"Tell me the
story," I cried, "tell me!"

And frightened was I at my bravery.
A
curious smile his thin lips curved,
That well had my bravery
unnerved.
And this is the story he told that day
To me in the
Mission old and gray--
The Mission Carmel at Monterey.
"Each midnight, since have seventy years
Begun their cycle around

the spheres,
Two faces have looked from that window there.
One is
a woman's, young and fair,
With tender eyes and floating hair.
Love,
and regret, and dumb despair,
Are told in each tint of the fair sweet
face.
The other is crowned with a courtly grace,
Gazing, with all a
lover's pride,
On the beautiful woman by his side.
Anon! a change
flits o'er his mien,
And baffled rage in his glance is seen.
Paler they
grow as the hours go by,
With the pallor that comes with the
summons to die.
Slowly fading, and shrinking away,
Clutched in
the grasp of a gaunt decay,
Till the herald of morn on the sky is
thrown;
Then a shriek, a curse, and a dying moan,
Comes from that
death-black window there.
A mocking laugh rings out on the air,

From that darkful place, in the nascent dawn,
And the faces that
looked from the window are gone.
Seventy years, when the Spanish
flag
Floated above yon beetling crag,
And this dearthful mission
place was rife
With the panoply of busy life;
Hard by, where yon
canyon, deep and wide,
Sweeps it adown the mountain side,
A
cavalier dwelt with his beautiful bride.
Oft to the priestal shrive went
she;
As often, stealthily, followed