AT MISSION PURISSIMA
The hands are dust that piled these rough brown walls,Yet still the sunshine fallsLike a touch warm with love upon the gilded cross,Whose yearly lossBy wind and rain has worn its gilt away,As youth, which cannot stayWhen life frets hard upon its shining stuff:Yet ’tis enoughThat once the cross was gold, the heart alive to joy.The dark-faced altar boyStill lights the candles at the Virgin’s feet;And strange and sad and sweetThe air is dim with long-dead incense-smoke:Wan Joseph draws his cloak,Faded and torn, still ’round the Holy Child;And woman-wise and mildPure Mary bends her soft eyes to the floor,Where from the far-off door,Through which the sky looks and the green-branched trees,On bended, praying kneesSad penitents have worn a weary trailThere to the altar rail.Down that old road of pain a woman glides;The dim place hidesHer eyes that plead and lips that wince and pray:The saints that stayUp on the painted walls in the sweet duskOf sandal-smoke and musk,And scent of withering altar flowers, and holy myrrh,Look down on herWith pity—for a saint must understand.In one slim handShe bears a small, rude-shapen earthen jar,Whose roughness cannot marThe rare, green grace of the mimosa treeWhose lace-like traceryOf leaf and stem she touches as she prays.Suppliant she laysHer fingers gently, and each little leaf,Feeling her grief,Folds to its green mate like two hands in prayer:The branches shareHer heart’s hurt tremble, as if they would pleadFor her at need.Above the candles in her deep-niched placePure Mary’s face,Compassionate and tender, bids her speak.Entreating, passion-weak,The slow words come: “O Queen of Heaven!Who yet on earth was evenWoman as I—hear this my woman’s plea;Grant this to me,—Thou in whose white breast a woman’s heart hath beat.O Pure! O Sweet!Keep me, thy little one, still clean and pure.Let me endureAll pain of life, so that thou make me strong.Hold me from wrong;And as these leaves that tremble over-muchClose at my touch,Shut thou my heart against this evil love.As the gray doveBeside the water pool would flee the snare,Keep me awareHow he who seeks seeks not my soul at all,Which flies beyond his call;But for his careless joy one idle hourWould bind his powerLike Eve’s snake round me, laughing as he crushed.â€There in the hushed,Sweet darkness, pierced by points of candle lightLike stars at night,She left the green mimosa at the Virgin’s feet,Continually to entreatHer soul’s safety—then across the worn old floorShe walked, with face transfigured, to the door.