And oh! when others take our place, And Earth's green curtain hides our face, Ere on the stage, so silent now, The last new hero makes his bow: So may our deeds, recalled once more In Memory's sweet but brief encore, Down all the circling ages run, With the world's plaudit of "Well done!" The Lost Galleon. In sixteen hundred and forty-one, The regular yearly galleon, Laden with odorous gums and spice, India cottons and India rice, And the richest silks of far Cathay, Was due at Acapulco Bay. Due she was, and over-due,-- Galleon, merchandise, and crew, Creeping along through rain and shine, Through the tropics, under the line. The trains were waiting outside the walls, The wives of sailors thronged the town, The traders sat by their empty stalls, And the viceroy himself came down; The bells in the tower were all a-trip, _Te Deums_ were on each father's lip, The limes were ripening in the sun For the sick of the coming galleon. All in vain. Weeks passed away, And yet no galleon saw the bay: India goods advanced in price; The governor missed his favorite spice; The senoritas mourned for sandal, And the famous cottons of Coromandel; And some for an absent lover lost, And one for a husband,--Donna Julia, Wife of the captain, tempest-tossed, In circumstances so peculiar: Even the fathers, unawares, Grumbled a little at their prayers; And all along the coast that year Votive candles were scarce and dear. Never a tear bedims the eye That time and patience will not dry; Never a lip is curved with pain That can't be kissed into smiles again: And these same truths, as far as I know, Obtained on the coast of Mexico More than two hundred years ago, In sixteen hundred and fifty-one,-- Ten years after the deed was done,-- And folks had forgotten the galleon: The divers plunged in the Gulf for pearls, White as the teeth of the Indian girls; The traders sat by their full bazaars; The mules with many a weary load, And oxen, dragging their creaking cars, Came and went on the mountain road. Where was the galleon all this while: Wrecked on some lonely coral isle? Burnt by the roving sea-marauders, Or sailing north under secret orders? Had she found the Anian passage famed, By lying Moldonado claimed, And sailed through the sixty-fifth degree Direct to the North Atlantic sea? Or had she found the "River of Kings," Of which De Fonte told such strange things In sixteen forty? Never a sign, East or West or under the line, They saw of the missing galleon; Never a sail or plank or chip, They found of the long-lost treasure-ship, Or enough to build a tale upon. But when she was lost, and where and how, Are the facts we're coming to just now.