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^J&s
SWING the mission bells at sunset on a smould'ring crimson sky, And across the shadowed meadows the homing flocks pass by — The shy sheep to the sheepf old, the shepherd to the light That beckons the hearts of mankind home out of the homeless night. Above the happy orange-groves, red-roofed upon the hill, The Brotherhood of Francis is glooming, starkly still, And beneath its lichened towers, from dawn to death of day, A silent company of saints worship their lives away. Not for these Earth's passions, its sinnings and its tears, And not for them the autumntide or budding of the years. And yet across some heart-strings, beneath the somber serge, Sweep Mem'ry's restless fingers in requiem or in dirge. In the loft before the organ, quiv'ring in the afterglow. Bends a spare, ascetic figure, dreaming of his Long Ago. Father Joseph 's priestly fingers seek a long-forgotten strain. And a man's heart, 'neath his vesture, echoes with a silenced pain, Like the hint of lost caresses in slow-falling summer rain.
Once the Spring blazed pink with blossom in a garden drenched with dew, Burst the lily hedge to beauty, woke the buds upon the yew ; Once a boy-heart bloomed to manhood in the gentle Southern clime, And to him Earth shone as Heaven and the Spring was Eden-time. He, a humble music-teacher ; she, the daughter of a race High and wealthy, lords and masters, many years upon their place ; All around their vine-hung turrets clung the tentacles of Pride, And their doors were barred to strangers, that to grandees opened wide. Sometimes from a grim rock 's bosom springs the fragile columbine. And a granite boulder nurtures a strange warmth of passion-vine. So Marie was born and blossomed, last and loveliest of her line — Flower-slender, fair and fragrant, with a face all petal-pale ; With a heart like a white lily, and a body lily-frail.
Passed her child years and her girlhood ; she was ripe for marriage hour, And a hundred Spanish grandees sued to pluck and claim the flower ; Yet among her haughty suitors she walked sooth and fancy-free — Never crest nor gold nor title won a heart-beat from Marie ;
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