Not far from San Antonio,
Stands the Church of San José;
Brightly its walls are gilded
With the sun's departing ray.
The long grass twines the arches through,
And, stirred by evening air,
Wave gracefully the vine's dark leaves,
And bends the prickly pear.
High, from its broken, mouldering top,
The holy cross looks down,
While round the open portals stand
Figures of saints in stone.
And round its ancient spires,
In the turrets wide and high,
While you watch the night-birds flap their wings,
You hear their piercing cry.
And ever and anon the bats,
In clusters, seek their homes,
As night, with shrouding mantle,
On the Mission Chapel comes.
Oh! 'twas not thus, when Jesuit priests
Their chaunt at evening sung,
As, echoing o'er the river's shores,
The vesper bells were rung.
Now, while we linger round its walls,
Its history would we learn?—
How San José's walls and spires rose up?—
To its legends we must turn.
In learning high, and cunning deep,
With wealth and numbers, come—
Christians to make the red men all—
These haughty priests of Rome.
Did they tell them they were brothers?
That every human heart
Was a link in love's great chain—
Of salvation's scheme a part?
Not they: they bade them hew the stone,
And bear its heavy weight;
And, while they used the Indian's strength,
They gained his fiercest hate.
But towers, and spires, and steeples rise,
And the Church of San José
Arrests the traveller, who kneels,
Then passes on his way.
Turning once more, to bend before
The Virgin and her Son,
The Cherubim and Seraphim
From his strained gaze are gone.
No converts from the red men
Made these haughty priests of Rome;
But still on ignorance and vice
The holy cross looked down,
Though Jesus, with the crown of thorns,
The offering made for sin,
And the vase of holy water,
Borne by angels, stood within.
Rich tapestries, and gilded signs,
And images stood forth,
And the patron saint, San José—
Were all these nothing worth?
"The red man's heart is adamant,"
Thus do the Jesuits say;
"Unmoved they see these splendours—
Unchanged they turn away."
Not under stern and unjust rule
The red man's heart will melt,
But by such gentle, sorrowing love,
As Christ for mortals felt.
Oh! that the star might shine for them,
That unto us is given,
To cheer our dreary path on earth,
And guide our steps to heaven.
Let the ruins of her glory stand,
A monument to art;
But the temple of the Living God
Should be the human heart;
While mouldering in tower and wall,
And bending in decay,
Do we gaze upon this chapel fair,
The Church of San José.