Romantic California

s of Nature or the quiet singing of the natives?the music of their clappers called the Indian neophyte to prayer, to decadence, and to his final annihilation?the clang of their brazen tongues summoned the cassocked friar from contemplation in his flower-decked garden to the cool white nave of the Ctusocked Friar mission church?summoned, too, the dark-eyed Spanish lady from the stillness of her patio to prayer before the carved-wood altars, to her marriage, to the baptism of her children. Each year their Christmas carillons called the countryside to behold the Infant in the manger, and to witness anew the mystery-plays of the Holy Week. Their echoes quieted the dying embers of Spanish glory and bade farewell forever to the pastoral epoch of California: "Bells of the past, whose long-forgotten music Still fills the wide expanse, Tinging the sober twilight of the present With color of romance. "I hear your call, and see the sun descending On rock, and wave and sand, As down the Coast the Mission voices blending Girdle the heathen land. "Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers, The white Presidio; The swart commander in his leathern jerkin, The priest in stole of snow. "Once more I see Portola's cross uplifting Above the setting sun; And past the headland, northward, slowly drifting, The freighted galleon." Now, alas, their tongues are stilled, for in this, our workaday life of to-day, the voice of the church is ...