Helen Hunt Jackson

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   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; 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,   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. 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,   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 Let fall one little leaf of thine,   With love, upon her bier.