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.
Helen Hunt Jackson
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