A California Wild-Rose Spray [pp. 61]

A California Wild-Rose Spray.
A CALIFORNIA WILD-ROSE SPRAY.I
WITH sandaled feet, a gray-robed band
Kept on its weary way;
In an unknown and pathless land,
O'er hill, vale, dune, and stretch of sand,
Nor paused till set of day,
Where stands San Luis Rey.
Blue were the skies, bluer the seas,
Purple the far, dim hills;
The madrone shook its glossy leaves
Out softly in the summer breeze,
To countless linnet trills;
Naught else the silence fills.
They halt, a shadowed stream beside,
The Mission's cross to raise;
Each close gray cowl is drawn aside,
Each voice rings out in one full tide,
Of fervent thanks and praise,
For toilsome nights and days.
One youthful friar drew from his breast,
Beneath its folds of gray,
And softly to his eyelids pressed,
Then fastened on the black crosscrest,
A slender wild-rose spray;
And knelt again to pray.
By some mysterious power that wills,
To the Gray Friars there came
A scene that stilled the linnet trills,
And brought again the far blue hills,
Of their beloved Spain,
And made them boys again.
Dull toil, sharp pain, hard sacrifice,
For one brief spell were o'er;
Again they looked in mother eyes,
And saw the tower and turret rise,
Above the tawny shore,
That they must know no more.
O holy friars, the human tears,
That down your brown cheeks stray,
Were earnest of a work that clears
Our history's dark page through long years;
O, friars of order gray,
Touched by a wild-rose spray!
Agnes At Manning.
1 On July I4, x769, el Padre Crespi, in his diary, notes that he plucked a spray, containing six roses and twelve
buds, near the site of the present San Luis Rey.- From Bancroft's History of California.
1886.]
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