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(Excerpt)
HER old boat loaded with oranges, | |
| Her baby tied on her breast, | |
| Minorcan Dolores bends to her oars, | |
| Noting each reed on the slow-moving shores; | |
| But the way is long, and the inlet wide,— | 5 |
| Can two small hands overcome the tide | |
| Sweeping up into the west? | |
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| Four little walls of coquina-stone, | |
| Rude thatch of palmetto leaves; | |
| There have they nestled, like birds in a tree, | 10 |
| From winter and labor and hunger free; | |
| Taking from earth their small need, but no more, | |
| No thought of the morrow, no laying in store, | |
| No gathering patient sheaves. | |
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| Alone in their Southern island-home, | 15 |
| Through the year of summer days, | |
| The two love on; and the bountiful beach | |
| Clusters its sea-food within his reach; | |
| The two love on, and the tropical land | |
| Drops its wild fruit in her indolent hand, | 20 |
| And life is a sunshiny haze. | |
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| Luiz, Dolores, and baby brown, | |
| With dreamy, passionate eyes,— | |
| Far in the past, lured by Saxon wiles, | |
| A simple folk came from the Spanish sea-isles, | 25 |
| Now, tinged with the blood of the Creole quadroon, | |
| Their children live idly along the lagoon, | |
| Under the Florida skies. | |
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| Luiz, Dolores, and baby brown, | |
| Ah, their blossoming life of love!— | 30 |
| But fever falls with its withering blight: | |
| Dolores keeps watch through the sultry night, | |
| In vain her poor herbs, in vain her poor prayers,— | |
| Her Luiz is mounting the spirit-winged stairs | |
| That lead to her heaven above. | 35 |
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| So, her old boat loaded with oranges, | |
| Her baby tied on her breast, | |
| Dolores rows off to the ancient town, | |
| Where the blue-eyed soldiers come marching down | |
| From the far cold North; they are men who know— | 40 |
| Thus Dolores thinks—how to cure all woe; | |
| Nay, their very touch is blest. * * * * * | |
| But the northern soldiers move steadily on, | |
| They hear not nor understand; | |
| The last blue rank has passed down the street, | 45 |
| She sees but the dust of their marching feet; | |
| They have crossed a whole country by night and by day, | |
| And marked, with their blood, every step of the way, | |
| To conquer this Southern land. | |
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| They are gone—O despair! she turns to the church, | 50 |
| Half fainting, her fruit wet with tears; | |
| “Perhaps the old saint, who is always there, | |
| May wake up and take them to pay for a prayer; | |
| They are very sweet, as the saint will see, | |
| If he would but wake up, and listen to me: | 55 |
| But he sleeps so, he never hears.” | |
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| She enters; the church is filled with men, | |
| The pallid men of the North! | |
| Each dingy old pew is a sick man’s bed, | |
| Each battered old bench holds a weary head, | 60 |
| The altar-candles are swept away | |
| For vials and knives in shining array, | |
| And a new saint is stepping forth! | |
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| He must be a saint, for he comes from the shrine, | |
| A saint of a Northern creed,— | 65 |
| Clad in a uniform,—army blue, | |
| But surely the saints may wear any hue | |
| Dolores thinks, as he takes her hands | |
| And hears all her story, and understands | |
| The cry of her desperate need. | 70 |
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| An orange he gives to each weary man, | |
| To freshen the fevered mouth, | |
| Then forth they go down the old sea-wall, | |
| And they hear in the dusk the picket’s call; | |
| The row-boat is moored on the shadowy shore, | 75 |
| The Northern saint can manage an oar, | |
| And the boat glides fast to the south. | |
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| A healing touch and a holy drink, | |
| A bright little heavenly knife, | |
| And this strange Northern saint, who prays no prayers, | 80 |
| Brings back the soul from the spirit-winged stairs, | |
| And once more Minorcan Luiz’s dark eyes, | |
| In whose depths the warmth of the tropics lies, | |
| Rest calm on the awe-stricken wife. * * * * * | |
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