Daily Los Angeles herald., 1882-05-03
Mission san Fernando, A. ID. ISs2.

san Fernando, A. d. ISs
yen'e, mystic awe of midnight deep
Lo ihivering signs and hush of sleep
Ger shadowy arch and wall;
The wind goes by with hollow moan,
And Ger the ruins, dim and lone,
The trembling moonbeams fall.
The moon in glory rides on high
The camp fire fades; and, as lie
Beside the smouldering Goals,
A century, with its hopes and fears,
Its loves and hates, and smiles and tears,
Its mystic scroll unrolls
The myriad lamps OF heavenly light
Transfgure with halo bright
The hoary ruins gray;
And 10! from out the buried years
A Vision of the Past appears
Inall its brave array.
see beneath the mountain heights
The hurrying crowd of neophytes
Go by in burdened train;
And DER the purple billowy swells
The music of the Mission bells
Floats softly up again.
| see the solemn, priestly march
Beneath the massive church-way arch,
hear the prayers and signs
Around the altar, dim and quaint
Where Holy Virgin, Christ and Saint
Look down with plying eyes.
| see Il throng of maidens fair,
Sweet lips that murmur low in prayer,
Or penitential mood,
That have no secrets to confess
Save loves transgresSions, more or less
OF evil or of good.
see the dim procession slow
In solemn pageant come and go
To keep the Lenten Fast:
Quaint pomp OF holy mass and feast
Like sunrise rays that flush the east,
Night shadows fed and past.
see the 1.-THE vaquero dash
Across the plain, like lightning flash,
Or mid the eddying whirl
OF frantic bands that flee in vain
For safety DER the ilowery plain,
His trusty lasso hurl
see the caballero speed
And sudden rein his fiery steed,
And bow with knightly grace,
Beneath his broad sombrero's shade,
To greet the unreluetant maid
.O'ertaken in the race.
Morn, and flush OF green and gold
But not the glory as of old,
The Weakened vision greets;
No fleeing bands, with laundering sweep,
Disturb the ages dreamless sleep;
Bnt, hushed in silence soft and deep,
The Past the Present meets.
Now, but sea OF waving grain
0erspreads afar the shimmering plain,
Where once the serried bands,
In hayward fancy wandering free,
O'erclouded all the lands.
Dead are the Padres-eold and ghast;
Fled are the glories of the past
That once their shadows threw;
Dust are the hearts that once beat high,
And dimmed each lustrous, melting eye
That swept the azure blue
The signing olive bends and waves
Above the lone, forgotten graves
osneophytes and PRIEST
And lofty heights keep watch and ward,
As il the slumbering dust to guard
From earthly care released.
Beyond thy circle, granite-walled,
Hinged round and round with emerald,
Like shadoVy, phantom lines,
Where blue of skies and mountains merge,
Upon the dim horizons verge,
see the spectral pines.
They stand as in the long ago,
Down-gazing on the scene below
AS, in II spell-bound trance,
They looked upon that early scene,
Unfolded meath the skies serene
The reflected, dazzling sheen
OF crucifix and lance.
waste of crumbling, ruined piles;
A wreck of twisted, falling tiles,
Is all that tells to-day
OF San Fernandos kingly dover,
OF glory, triumph, pride and power,
Forever passed away!
Alas for Glory's cherished gleam!
Alas for Loves fond, tender dreaml
For youthful hope and pridel
Now naught remains to tell of all,
Save walls that totter to their fall;
And hushed Obivion's settled pail
Spreads dimly far and wide.
ALBERT f. KERcHEvA
Los Angeles, May, 1852.