Augustin S. Macdonald, comp. A Collection of Verse by California Poets. 1914.
By Einnim Havemeyer TuckerBelle of Monterey
I
With its white adobe walls,
The court with its wild grown flowers,
And the stone-paved Spanish halls,
With the pale Madonna face,
And the brown hands ever weaving,
Fold on fold of cobweb lace.
To the shores of Carmel Bay,
She was known “Donna Maria”
As the “Belle of Monterey.”
The boy with fresh, fair face
And the dark browed Hidalgo
Strove to find in her heart his place.
There was one apart from the rest,
And of all the gay throng ’round her,
She loved that man the best.
And his heart was with his home,
So Donna Maria in her casa
Lives year after year alone.
With her inborn Spanish grace.
She showed us her flower garden,
And the quaint old foreign place.
And from wrappings yellowed by time,
There came that aroma of romance,
Born only by Spain’s sunny clime.
Fans, jewels, and rare fine lace,
Told more of the past and its memories,
Than that calm, passionless face.
She clings—the last of her race—
And will die where she passed her girlhood
Of her story leaving no trace.
From the casa’s open door,
Round which the tall, grim cacti
Stood like sentinels of war.
With the spell that about her lay
Sweet, courtly Donna Maria
The once “Belle of Monterey.”