Debris | Page 2

and high,?And the ocean rocked it to the sky,?An earthquake trembled the shore along,?Hushing on lip of praise its song,?And jarred to its center this Mission strong.?When the morning broke with a summer sun,?The earth was at rest, the storm was done.?Still the Mission tower'd in its stately pride;?Still the cottage smiled by the canyon-side;?But never the priest was there to bless,?And the cottage roof was tenantless.?Vainly they sought for the padre, dead,?For the cottage dwellers; amazed, they said?'Twas a miracle; but since that day?There's a ghost in the Mission old and gray--
The Mission Carmel of Monterey
"A sequel there is to that tale," said he,?"Of the way and the truth I hold the key."?"Show me the way," I cried, "Show me?To the depth of this curious mystery!"?He waved me to follow; my heart stood still?Under the ban of a mightier will?Than mine. A terror of icy chill?O'er-shivered my being from hand to brain,?Freezing the blood in each pulsing vein,?As I followed this most mysterious guide?Through the solid floor at the chancel side,?Into a passage whose stifling breath?Reeked with the pestilence of death.?Down through a subterranean vault,?Over broken steps with never a halt,?Till we stood in the midst of a spacious room,?A charnel-house in its shroud of gloom.?Only a window, narrow and small,?Left in the build of the heavy wall,?Through which the flickering sunbeams died,?Showed passway to the world outside.?Slowly my eyes to the darkness grew,?And I saw in the gloom, or rather knew,?That my feet had touched two skeleton forms,?One closely clasped in the other's arms.?Recoiling, I shuddered and turned my face?From the fleshless mockery of embrace.?Again o'er a heap of rubbish and rust,?I stumbled and caught in the moth and dust?What hardly a sense of my soul believes--?A mold-stained package of parchment leaves!?A hideous bat flapped into my face!?O'ercome with horror, I fled the place,?And stood again with my curious guide?On the solid floor, at the chancel's side.?But, lo! in a moment the age-bowed seer?Was a darkly frowning cavalier,?Gazing no longer in woeful trance,?Vengeance blazed in his every glance.?Then a mocking laugh rang the Mission o'er,?And I stood alone by the chapel door;?And, save for the mold-stained parchment leaves,?I had thought it the vision that night-mare weaves.?Hardly a sense of my soul believes,?Yet I held in my hand the parchment leaves.?Careful I noted them, one by one,?Each was a letter in rhyming run,?Written over and over, in tenderest strain,?By fingers that never will write again.?I strung them together, a tale to tell,?And named it "The Mystery of Carmel."?And these are the letters I found that day,?In the mission ruin, old and gray--
The Mission Carmel of Monterey:
TO THE HOLY FATHER SANSON
Oh, holy father, list thee to my prayer!?I may not kneel to thee as others kneel,?And tell my heart-aches with the suppliant's air,?But fiercer burns the fire I must conceal.
My soul is groping in the mists of doubt,?The sunlight and the shadows all are gone,?Only a cold, gray cloud my life's about,?Nor ever vision of a fairer dawn.
A father ne'er my brow in loving smoothed,?Nor taught my baby tongue to lisp his name;?No mother's voice my childish sorrows soothed,?Nor sought my wild, imperious will to tame.
Yet ran my life, like some bright bubbling spring,?Too full of thoughtless happiness to care?If that the future might more gladness bring,?Or might its skies be clouded or be fair.
Afar upon the purple hills of Spain--?Since waned the moons of half a year ago--?I sported, reckless as the laughing main,?Nor dreamed in life a thought of grief to know.
To-day I pine here in a chain whose gall?Is bitterer than drop of wormwood brought?From that salt sea where nothing lives, and all?The recompense my willfulness has brought.
Oh, holy father, list thee to my prayer!?And though I may not kneel as others kneel,?And tell my heart-aches with a suppliant air,?I crave they grace a sickened soul to heal.
Here, close beside this sacred font of gold,?My humble prayer, oh, father, I will lay,?With all its weight of misery untold;?And wait impatient that which thou wilt say
REVENITA.
TO REVENITA
When to the font, this morn, my lips I pressed,?A fairy's gift my fingers trembled o'er;?A sweeter prayer ne'er smile of angel blessed,?Nor gemmed a tiar that the priesthood wore.
The secret of they grief I may not know,?Since that thy lips refuse the tale to tell;?Methinks, dear child, it was the sound of woe?That woke an echo in my heart's deep well.
The wail of a spirit that a-yearning gropes?In darkness for the sunlight that is fled;?A broken idol in secret wept, and hopes--?Crushed hopes--that are to thee as are the dead.
A tender memory ling'ring yet of when?Each bounding pulse beat faster with its joy;?A something that allured, and won, and then?With waking fled, and years may not destroy
The impress which it left upon thy brain?But seek thee, child, grief's ravaging to stay??Thy