The Miracle of Padre Junipero. 85

Out from the desert's blinding heat

The Padre dropped at the heathen's feet.
They stood and gazed for a little space

Down on his pallid and careworn face,

And a smile of scorn went round the band
As they touched alternate with foot and hand
This mortal waif, that the outer space
Of dim mysterious sky and sand

Flung with so little of Christian grace
Down on their barren, sterile strand.

Said one to him: "It seems thy god
Is a very pitiful kind of god;

He could not shield thine aching eyes
From the blowing desert sands that rise,
Nor turn aside from thy old gray head
The glittering blade that is brandishèd
By the sun he set in the heavens high;
He could not moisten thy lips when dry;
The desert fire is in thy brain;

Thy limbs are racked with the fever-pain:
If this be the grace he showeth thee
Who art his servant, what may we,

Strange to his ways and his commands,
Seek at his unforgiving hands?"

"Drink but this cup," said the Padre, straight, "And thou shalt know whose mercy bore These aching limbs to your heathen door,

And purged my soul of its gross estate.
Drink in His name, and thou shalt see
The hidden depths of this mystery.

Drink!" and he held the cup. One blow

From the heathen dashed to the ground below

The sacred cup that the Padre bore ;

And the thirsty soil drank the precious store Of sacramental and holy wine,

That emblem and consecrated sign

And blessed symbol of blood divine.

Then, says the legend (and they who doubt
The same as heretics be accurst),

From the dry and feverish soil leaped out

A living fountain; a well-spring burst
Over the dusty and broad champaign,

Over the sandy and sterile plain,

Till the granite ribs and the milk-white stones

The Miracle of Padre Junipero.

That lay in the valley-the scattered bones-
Moved in the river and lived again!

Such was the wonderful miracle
Wrought by the cup of wine that fell
From the hands of the pious Padre Serro,
The very reverend Junipero.

87

AN ARCTIC VISION.

WHERE the short-legged Esquimaux

Waddle in the ice and snow,

And the playful polar bear

Nips the hunter unaware;

Where by day they track the ermine,

And by night another vermin,

Segment of the frigid zone,
Where the temperature alone
Warms on St. Elias' cone;
Polar dock, where Nature slips
From the ways her icy ships;
Land of fox and deer and sable,

Shore end of our western cable,-
Let the news that flying goes

Thrill through all your Arctic flocs,

An Arctic Vision.

And reverberate the boast

From the cliffs of Beechey's coast,
Till the tidings, circling round

Every bay of Norton Sound,

Throw the vocal tide-wave back

To the isles of Kodiac.

Let the stately polar bears

Waltz around the pole in pairs,

And the walrus, in his glee,

Bare his tusk of ivory ;

While the bold sea unicorn

Calmly takes an extra horn;
All ye polar skies, reveal your
Very rarest of parhelia ;
Trip it, all ye merry dancers,

In the airiest of lancers;

Slide, ye solemn glaciers, slide,
One inch farther to the tide,

Nor in rash precipitation
Upset Tyndal's calculation.
Know you not what fate awaits you,
Or to whom the future mates you?
All ye icebergs, makes salaam,--
You belong to Uncle Sam !

89