Читать книгу Complete Poetical Works - Bret Harte - Страница 24

     This is the tale that the Chronicle

     Tells of the wonderful miracle

     Wrought by the pious Padre Serro,

     The very reverend Junipero.

     The heathen stood on his ancient mound,

     Looking over the desert bound

     Into the distant, hazy South,

     Over the dusty and broad champaign,

     Where, with many a gaping mouth

     And fissure, cracked by the fervid drouth,

     For seven months had the wasted plain

     Known no moisture of dew or rain.

     The wells were empty and choked with sand;

     The rivers had perished from the land;

     Only the sea-fogs to and fro

     Slipped like ghosts of the streams below.

     Deep in its bed lay the river's bones,

     Bleaching in pebbles and milk-white stones,

     And tracked o'er the desert faint and far,

     Its ribs shone bright on each sandy bar.

     Thus they stood as the sun went down

     Over the foot-hills bare and brown;

     Thus they looked to the South, wherefrom

     The pale-face medicine-man should come,

     Not in anger or in strife,

     But to bring—so ran the tale—

     The welcome springs of eternal life,

     The living waters that should not fail.

     Said one, "He will come like Manitou,

     Unseen, unheard, in the falling dew."

     Said another, "He will come full soon

     Out of the round-faced watery moon."

     And another said, "He is here!" and lo,

     Faltering, staggering, feeble and slow,

     Out from the desert's blinding heat

     The Padre dropped at the heathen's feet.

     They stood and gazed for a little space

     Down on his pallid and careworn face,

     And a smile of scorn went round the band

     As they touched alternate with foot and hand

     This mortal waif, that the outer space

     Of dim mysterious sky and sand

     Flung with so little of Christian grace

     Down on their barren, sterile strand.

     Said one to him: "It seems thy God

     Is a very pitiful kind of God:

     He could not shield thine aching eyes

     From the blowing desert sands that rise,

     Nor turn aside from thy old gray head

     The glittering blade that is brandished

     By the sun He set in the heavens high;

     He could not moisten thy lips when dry;

     The desert fire is in thy brain;

     Thy limbs are racked with the fever-pain.

     If this be the grace He showeth thee

     Who art His servant, what may we,

     Strange to His ways and His commands,

     Seek at His unforgiving hands?"

     "Drink but this cup," said the Padre, straight,

     "And thou shalt know whose mercy bore

     These aching limbs to your heathen door,

     And purged my soul of its gross estate.

     Drink in His name, and thou shalt see

     The hidden depths of this mystery.

     Drink!" and he held the cup.  One blow

     From the heathen dashed to the ground below

     The sacred cup that the Padre bore,

     And the thirsty soil drank the precious store

     Of sacramental and holy wine,

     That emblem and consecrated sign

     And blessed symbol of blood divine.

     Then, says the legend (and they who doubt

     The same as heretics be accurst),

     From the dry and feverish soil leaped out

     A living fountain; a well-spring burst

     Over the dusty and broad champaign,

     Over the sandy and sterile plain,

     Till the granite ribs and the milk-white stones

     That lay in the valley—the scattered bones—

     Moved in the river and lived again!

     Such was the wonderful miracle

     Wrought by the cup of wine that fell

     From the hands of the pious Padre Serro,

     The very reverend Junipero.

     Of all the fountains that poets sing,—

     Crystal, thermal, or mineral spring,

     Ponce de Leon's Fount of Youth,

     Wells with bottoms of doubtful truth,—

     In short, of all the springs of Time

     That ever were flowing in fact or rhyme,

     That ever were tasted, felt, or seen,

     There were none like the Spring of San Joaquin.

     Anno Domini eighteen-seven,

     Father Dominguez (now in heaven,—

     Obiit eighteen twenty-seven)

     Found the spring, and found it, too,

     By his mule's miraculous cast of a shoe;

     For his beast—a descendant of Balaam's ass—

     Stopped on the instant, and would not pass.

     The Padre thought the omen good,

     And bent his lips to the trickling flood;

     Then—as the Chronicles declare,

     On the honest faith of a true believer—

     His cheeks, though wasted, lank, and bare,

     Filled like a withered russet pear

     In the vacuum of a glass receiver,

     And the snows that seventy winters bring

     Melted away in that magic spring.

     Such, at least, was the wondrous news

     The Padre brought into Santa Cruz.

     The Church, of course, had its own views

     Of who were worthiest to use

     The magic spring; but the prior claim

     Fell to the aged, sick, and lame.

     Far and wide the people came:

     Some from the healthful Aptos Creek

     Hastened to bring their helpless sick;

     Even the fishers of rude Soquel

     Suddenly found they were far from well;

     The brawny dwellers of San Lorenzo

     Said, in fact, they had never been so;

     And all were ailing,—strange to say,—

     From Pescadero to Monterey.

     Over the mountain they poured in,

     With leathern bottles and bags of skin;

     Through the canyons a motley throng

     Trotted, hobbled, and limped along.

     The Fathers gazed at the moving scene

     With pious joy and with souls serene;

     And then—a result perhaps foreseen—

     They laid out the Mission of San Joaquin.

     Not in the eyes of faith alone

     The good effects of the water shone;

     But skins grew rosy, eyes waxed clear,

     Of rough vaquero and muleteer;

     Angular forms were rounded out,

     Limbs grew supple and waists grew stout;

     And as for the girls,—for miles about

     They had no equal!  To this day,

     From Pescadero to Monterey,

     You'll still find eyes in which are seen

     The liquid graces of San Joaquin.

     There is a limit to human bliss,

     And the Mission of San Joaquin had this;

     None went abroad to roam or stay

     But they fell sick in the queerest way,—

     A singular maladie du pays,

     With gastric symptoms: so they spent

     Their days in a sensuous content,

     Caring little for things unseen

     Beyond their bowers of living green,

     Beyond the mountains that lay between

     The world and the Mission of San Joaquin.

     Winter passed, and the summer came

     The trunks of madrono, all aflame,

     Here and there through the underwood

     Like pillars of fire starkly stood.

     All of the breezy solitude

       Was filled with the spicing of pine and bay

     And resinous odors mixed and blended;

       And dim and ghostlike, far away,

     The smoke of the burning woods ascended.

     Then of a sudden the mountains swam,

     The rivers piled their floods in a dam,

     The ridge above Los Gatos Creek

       Arched its spine in a feline fashion;

     The forests waltzed till they grew sick,

       And Nature shook in a speechless passion;

     And, swallowed up in the earthquake's spleen,

     The wonderful Spring of San Joaquin

     Vanished, and never more was seen!

     Two days passed: the Mission folk

     Out of their rosy dream awoke;

     Some of them looked a trifle white,

     But that, no doubt, was from earthquake fright.

     Three days: there was sore distress,

     Headache, nausea, giddiness.

     Four days: faintings, tenderness

     Of the mouth and fauces; and in less

     Than one week—here the story closes;

     We won't continue the prognosis—

     Enough that now no trace is seen

     Of Spring or Mission of San Joaquin.

     You see the point?  Don't be too quick

     To break bad habits: better stick,

     Like the Mission folk, to your ARSENIC.

     Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten music

              Still fills the wide expanse,

     Tingeing the sober twilight of the Present

              With color of romance!

     I hear your call, and see the sun descending

              On rock and wave and sand,

     As down the coast the Mission voices, blending,

              Girdle the heathen land.

     Within the circle of your incantation

              No blight nor mildew falls;

     Nor fierce unrest, nor lust, nor low ambition

              Passes those airy walls.

     Borne on the swell of your long waves receding,

              I touch the farther Past;

     I see the dying glow of Spanish glory,

              The sunset dream and last!

     Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers,

              The white Presidio;

     The swart commander in his leathern jerkin,

              The priest in stole of snow.

     Once more I see Portala's cross uplifting

              Above the setting sun;

     And past the headland, northward, slowly drifting,

              The freighted galleon.

     O solemn bells! whose consecrated masses

              Recall the faith of old;

     O tinkling bells! that lulled with twilight music

              The spiritual fold!

     Your voices break and falter in the darkness,—

              Break, falter, and are still;

     And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending,

              The sun sinks from the hill!

     Looking seaward, o'er the sand-hills stands the fortress, old and

        quaint,

     By the San Francisco friars lifted to their patron saint,—

     Sponsor to that wondrous city, now apostate to the creed,

     On whose youthful walls the Padre saw the angel's golden reed;

     All its trophies long since scattered, all its blazon brushed away;

     And the flag that flies above it but a triumph of to-day.

     Never scar of siege or battle challenges the wandering eye,

     Never breach of warlike onset holds the curious passer-by;

     Only one sweet human fancy interweaves its threads of gold

     With the plain and homespun present, and a love that ne'er grows old;

     Only one thing holds its crumbling walls above the meaner dust,—

     Listen to the simple story of a woman's love and trust.

     Count von Resanoff, the Russian, envoy of the mighty Czar,

     Stood beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are.

     He with grave provincial magnates long had held serene debate

     On the Treaty of Alliance and the high affairs of state;

     He from grave provincial magnates oft had turned to talk apart