Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Barry Swackhamer
Taken: February 12, 2013
Caption: The Monument Beneath the Moon Tree
Additional Description: (On this monument is inscribed the poem Monterey.)

Monterey

In the mantle of old traditions,
In the rime of a vanished day,
The shrouded and silent city
Sits by her crescent bay.

The ruined fort on the hilltop
Where never a bunting streams
looks down, a cannonless fortress
On the solemn city of dreams.

Gardens of wonderful roses,
Climbing o’er roof and wall,
Woodbine and crimson geranium,
Hollyhocks , purple and tall.

Mingle their odorous breathings
With the crisp, salt breeze form the
Sands, where pebbles and sounding sea
Shells are gathered by children’s hands.

Women, with olive faces,
And liquid southern eye,
Dark as the forest berries
That grace the woods in July.

Tenderly train the roses,
Gathering here and there
A bud – the riches and rarest –
For a place in their long dark hair.

Feeble and garrulous old men
Tell, in the Spanish tongue
Of the good, grand times at the mission
And the hymns that the fathers sung;

Of the oil and the wine, and the plenty
And the dance in the twilight gray
(?) and the head shakes sadly
“were good time in Monterey”

Behind in the march of cities
The last in the eager stride
Of villages born the latest
She dreams by the ocean side.
Submitted: February 19, 2013, by Barry Swackhamer of Brentwood, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p234661
File Size: 3.500 Megabytes

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