And ever after, on that fatal day
That Friar Pedro rode abroad lassoing, A ghostly couple came and went away
With savage whoop and heathenish hallooing, Which brought discredit on San Luis Rey,
And proved the Mission's ruin and undoing; For ere ten years had passed, the squaw and Friar Performed to empty walls and fallen spire.
The Mission is no more; upon its walls
The golden lizards slip, or breathless pause
Still as the sunshine brokenly that falls
Through crannied roof and spider-webs of gauze ;
No more the bell its solemn warning calls—
A holier silence thril's and overawes;
And the sharp lights and shadows of to-day
Outline the Mission of San Luis Rey.
I SPEAK not the English well, but Pachita
She speak for me; is it not so, my Pancha?
Eh, little rogue? Come, salute me the stranger
Americano.
Sir, in my country we say, "Where the heart is,
There live the speech." Ah! you not understand? So
Pardon an old man,-what you call "ol fogy,"-
Old, Señor, old! just so old as the Mission.
You see that pear-tree? How old you think, Señor?
Fifteen year? Twenty? Ah, Señor, just fifty
You like the wine? It is some at the Mission,
Made from the grape of the year Eighteen Hundred;
All the same time when the earthquake he come to
San Juan Bautista.
But Pancha is twelve, and she is the rose-tree;
And I am the olive, and this is the garden :
And Pancha we say; but her name is Francisca,
Same like her mother.
Eh,
you knew her? No? Ah! it is a story;
But I speak not, like Pachita, the English:
So if I try, you will sit here beside me,
When the American come to the Mission,
Many arrive at the house of Francisca :
One, he was fine man,―he buy the cattle
Of José Castro
So! he came much, and Francisca she saw him:
And it was love,—and a very dry season;
And the pears bake on the tree,—and the rain come,
But not Francisca.
Not for one year; and one night I have walk much Under the olive-tree, when comes Francisca,—— Comes to me here, with her child, this Francisca,— Under the olive-tree.
Sir, it was sad; . . . but I speak not the English;
So!... she stay here, and she wait for her husband:
He come no more, and she sleep on the hillside;
There stands Pachita,
Ah! there's the Angelus. Will you not enter?
Or shall you walk in the garden with Pancha?
Go, little rogue-sit-attend to the stranger.
Adios, Señor.
So, he's been telling that yarn about mother
Bless you! he tells it to every stranger:
Folks about yer say the old man's my father;
In sixteen hundred and forty-one,
The regular yearly galleon,
Laden with odorous gums and spice,
India cottons and India rice,
And the richest silks of far Cathay,
Was due at Acapulco Bay.
Due she was, and over-due,—
Galleon, merchandise, and crew,
Creeping along through rain and shine,
Through the tropics, under the line.
The trains were waiting outside the walls,
The wives of sailors thronged the town,
The traders sat by their empty stalls,
And the Viceroy himself came down;
The bells in the tower were all a-trip,
Te Deums were on each Father's lip,
The limes were ripening in the sun
For the sick of the coming galleon.
All in vain. Weeks passed away,
And yet no galleon saw the bay:
India goods advanced in price;
The Governor missed his favourite spice;
The Señoritas mourned for sandal
And the famous cottons of Coromandel;
And some for an absent lover lost,
And one for a husband,-Donna Julia,
Wife of the captain tempest-tossed,
In circumstances so peculiar :
Even the Fathers, unawares,
Grumbled a little at their prayers;
And all along the coast that year
Votive candles were scarce and dear.
Never a tear bedims the eye
That time and patience will not dry;
Never a lip is curved with pain
That can't be kissed into smiles again;
And these same truths, as far as I know,
Obtained on the coast of Mexico
More than two hundred years ago,
In sixteen hundred and fifty-one,-
Ten years after the deed was done,—
And folks had forgotten the galleon:
The divers plunged in the gulf for pearls,
White as the teeth of the Indian girls;
The traders sat by their full bazaars;
The mules with many a weary load,
And oxen, dragging their creaking cars,
Came and went on the mountain road.
Where was the galleon all this while?
Wrecked on some lonely coral isle,
Burnt by the roving sea-marauders,
Or sailing north under secret orders?
Had she found the Anian passage famed,
By lying Moldonado claimed,
And sailed through the sixty-fifth degree
Direct to the North Atlantic Sea?
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