  “I sometimes think that never blows so red The rose as where some buried CÆsar bled; That every hyacinth the garden wears Dropt in her lap from some once lovely head.” THE dream days have come and gone. We have left historic Santiago with its forts and battle-fields, and the beautiful harbour of busy commercial Cienfuegos; we have skirted along the southern coast of Cuba, Pearl of the Antilles, through the Yucatan Channel, into the Gulf of Mexico, and now we are come to Havana, where countless voices call us in every direction both day and night. And yet it is not of Santiago, the old Merrimac lying in midchannel, El Caney, or San Juan Hill that I am writing to-day—no, nor of the wrecks of Cervera’s fleet strewn in rocking skeletons along the coast. No, those stories You are known to me, yet I cannot speak your names. You are near to me, yet the continent divides us. Your eyes speak to me, and yet, should we meet, you would pass unrecognised. A universal love, a universal memory has called you to me, and space cannot separate us. In this city of beauty, though alluring at every turn, there was one pilgrimage, come what may, I would not fail to make. The Morro and CabaÑas might be slighted, but not that patch of green earth away over the hill where the boys of the Maine lie buried so near the waters that engulfed them.
Far from the city they rest, where none may trouble their deep slumbers. Their only monument a bare worn path where thousands of those who loved your boys and honoured their memory have trodden down the grass about the lowly bed. It was a day as still as heaven, when in the City of the Dead I silently took my way; and coming to their long home I knelt down in the moist coverlet of grass and folding my hands looked up into the infinite depth of the blue sky, which dropped its peaceful curtain so tenderly over them. I seemed to stand upon a sun-kissed summit, from which I might scan the whole earth. And it was from there, afar off, I felt the yearning of your tears. I reached down to the earth and gathered some humble little flowers which pitying had throbbed out their sweet souls over the blessed dead; and I held them lovingly in my hands, and then placed them within the leaves of a book, thinking that some day when we should meet I would give them to you. And now they wait for your coming, O mothers! I could give you naught more precious. Yes, the days have come and gone as all days must, and we shall soon have left the Isles of Endless Summer. But so long as life lasts, their radiance will enfold us, and when the day is done, we shall draw the curtain well content, knowing that no greater beauty can await us than this fair earth has brought.
|
|
