And the folk in Acapulco town,
Over the waters, looking down,
Will see in the glow of the setting sun
The sails of the missing galleon,
And the royal standard of Philip _Rey_;
The gleaming mast and glistening spar,
As she nears the surf of the outer bar.
A _Te Deum_ sung on her crowded deck,
An odor of spice along the shore,
A crash, a cry from a shattered wreck,--
And the yearly galleon sails no more,
In or out of the olden bay;
For the blessed patron has found his day.
* * * * *
Such is the legend. Hear this truth:
Over the trackless past, somewhere,
Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
Only regained by faith and prayer,
Only recalled by prayer and plaint:
Each lost day has its patron saint!
A Second Review of the Grand Army.
I read last night of the Grand Review
In Washington's chiefest avenue,--
Two Hundred Thousand men in blue,
I think they said was the number,--
Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet,
The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat,
The clatter of hoofs in the stony street,
The cheers of people who came to greet,
And the thousand details that to repeat
Would only my verse encumber,--
Till I fell in a reverie, sad and sweet,
And then to a fitful slumber.
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