Chapter III: Part 3

When man is shorn of strength, and there is left
Only Omnipotence, we kiss the rod--
The very rod that smites us. In the cleft
We would attempt to hide from Deity,
Yet in his anger is an answered prayer--
The consciousness of presence; though we flee,
The wrath of love, is proof of constant care.
But when we beat against the empty air,
And every echo sends us back despair,
And even superstition, fails to foil
Our souls with the deceptive glow of spoil,
Then are we bittered, and our path made black;
We grope in mists, Cimmerian, on the wrack
Of constant and interminable doubt,
A natural prey, and easy put to rout.

To South, and West, they turn their fateful way
Beyond the Mississippi; and their day
Seemed lighted with a new influx of hope.
The sun embraced them with a warmer smile;
The mellow fragrance of the Southern slope
Added entrancement each succeeding mile.
Not all at once the exodus took place,
For they were many, and had scattered wide;
Yet to the southward all had set their face
To seek in other fields a place to hide
From cruel persecutions. When our kin
Lends its consanguined arder to the dart,
How more intent, with vengeful purposes,
How heavier is the load upon the heart!

They scatter into fragmentary clans,
And in the earnest of their added woe,
Give birth to new religious phantasies.
The unclogged streams of superstition flow,
When down the mountains, and across the moors,
The heavy, swollen torrents sweep along,
Throwing their scattered wrecks upon the shores,
And breaking barriers, however strong.
Baal was great, when Baalbec reared her crest
And column after column gave her grace
And all the East upon her beauty smiled;
But when the "owls and bats" usurped her place,
The god had fallen. In the temple dust,
Where man, with his immortal, had so strove
To make the marble animate (in vain,
Like other myriad phantoms of the brain)
Time fashions into ghostly hands, that sternly point above.
And so, God reaps involuntary praise,
From every fashioning of man's design;
His ways, indeed, cannot be called our ways;
Yet his hozannas, from each crumbling shrine,
Teach us the servitude of all the past;
That human hands but fashion Heavenly aids;
That every sculptured mythmark only fades
Into eternal sunshine, at the last.

Some crossed the mountain ramparts of the West;
Some lingered still upon the Eastern slope;
The empire yet was open to their zest,
And all were buoyant with a new-born hope.
But war, like pestilence, doth warp our lives,
And like contagion, it infects the air.
Peace comes in measure, but it never thrives
Directly after conflict, till grows fair
The flesh so lately scarred. Intestine war
Made ravage of their ranks; they ill could spare
Their bravest, yet the first to fall in fratricidal jar.
The lines, by conflict, soon were closely drawn,
And from the night of struggle nations dawn,
Whose chiefs assume the King's prerogative.
Clans fall, and clansmen perish; nations live
That pass chaotic conflict, and ensphere
Their crude material, as a new-born world,
To individual phalanxes, and rear
Their rude escutcheon. As in ether whirled,
The new born planet tracks its trial course;
So must this human query find its way,
And failure is its fashion; but still worse
Are those who fail to grapple with the day,
But look supinely on while vested rights
Are trampled under foot, and raise no hand
In deprecating gesture; from the heights
Of grim impartial history will stand
Unfading letters, written to the shame
Of those whose scourges fail to make a name.

PREHISTORIC RENDEZVOUS OF THE AZTECS.

On either side the crest of the Madre,
Where mountains kiss their hands to either sea,
One slope to blush upon the opening day,
The other, to drop down its tapestry
And hold the hand for promise of return,
Three nations, as three stars, to being burn.
The Toltecs, purest of the primal race,
The Chichamecs, devoted to the chase,
And Aztecs, strongest in the arts of war--
All, seeming thrown beneath one fateful star.
No painter limnes upon his labored scroll,
Be it fantastic, feast, or forest shades,
As war upon its victims; from the soul
(Plastic as new damped clay) it never fades
Till Time has ironed out the furrowed past;
And Peace, by laying fevered brows to rest,
Over the present has its mantle cast;
Then Nature folds its wardling to its breast.
So on these nations had been writ, in brief,
The deep-burned liturgy of hardened strife,
And through the furnace of their pungent grief,
They learn to plant the rootlets of their life.
One thing is never lacking, at the time,
When in their nascent passions, nations rise:
The craft of Priests, in every age and clime,
To "point a moral," or portend the skies.
And so, from cast-off altars to the sun,
New pleadings to new conjured gods arose;
The selfish passions since the world begun,
All seek supernal outlet on their foes.

One thing, not far from truth, grew into form:
The thought of one great, universal heart,
That beat against the window pane of thought,
And formed of all existences a part.
How near the passions of mankind will verge,
Sometimes, upon the borderland of bliss!
And all the race is bettered if they urge
Continuous march; nor turn their steps amiss;
A little light would lead them on to God,
And lacking, it the race for ages plod.
O that the infant eye of every race
Might recognize at once the Master's face!
All brought their tribute to Tonatiuh's shrine,
Still burnishing the sun with rays divine.
True worship strengthens in the wake of years;
Its song grows rhythmal with repeated chant;
Its beauty lingers, though it disappears;
Rekindle, and it melts the adamant.
But worship on a purely human base,
Though it may work its legends into song
And deify the noblest of its race,
Can never be unquestionably strong.
The happenings of Nature clog its wheels;
The elements brush down its cobweb foils;
And from its mimicry the heart appeals,
And heavenly souls are not for human toils.
It is impossible to still the brain
By merely human fiat at it thrust;
Man journeys out, and he returns again--
The Father's voice alone can call him from the dust.

And yet, each effort of the human soul,
To force existence for its latent wings,
Is of an energy that leaps control,
Whose germ from our immortal nature springs.
The very latch-key of the eternal realm,
Though touched in ignorance, commands the door.
A more than human wisdom guides the helm,
As we approach the palm-extending shore.
The hungry arms that reach out after God,
Are as the infants for the parent's breast;
The soul is weary of its fruitless plod,
And Nature beckons it to perfect rest.
What though the stream be poisoned, if its flow
Seeks only the great ocean to be lost;
Not long upon its bosom is it tossed,
Ere it recovers its old healthful glow.
The old-time sparkle of the mountain spring,
Gleams in the dew-drop that returns to earth.
No poison lurks within the second birth,
It ever carries healing on its wing.
Thus, howsoe'er the soul may find its way,
Over the wilderness to Jordan's plain,
It shall not fail of its eternal gain,
The night so trackless shall break into day.
The saint, whom angels ushered through the gate,
With paeans of rejoicing, once did grope
And lose his way, and loose his hold on hope--
No soul that reaches it is told to wait.
God waits upon the effort to reply,
And seeing human hands stretch out for aid,
His stronger palm is soon upon them laid--
Our weakness is the signet he cannot deny.

THE TOLTECS JOURNEY SOUTH.

The Toltecs were the first to break the way
Toward the vertex of the Summer sun;
To catch the fervor of his ripest ray,
And talismise the pilgrimage begun.
And after many days their fasting eyes
Are feasted with Mexitli's[A] lovely plain--
So like a newly-fashioned paradise,
An almost Eden, sprung to life again.
Her placid lakes gave back her deep blue sky
In rivalry of Nature--Nature's charms
Do cast reflected multiples, and try
To fold us in with her unnumbered arms.
Not all we see, but all we feel, invites,
Together with our seeing, to secure
An unrestricted homage; all unite
In this uncovered world, so rich and pure
And lade with sunshine, ripened into form,
Concentered rays to leaves and blossoms grown,
The larch impendent with its verdant cone,
The oak's historic battlement of storm,
The cypress mourning and exultant palms,
The provident maguey, whose offered alms
Found ready acceptation at their hands,
The maize, which they had known in northern lands,
Were native to her rich and virgin soil
And gave the husbandman unstinted spoil.

And thus, with Nature and themselves at rest,
Fresh inspiration from the God of peace
Expands and energizes every breast,
And fettered manhood labors for release.
Invention is emancipation: Time
Doth loosen Nature's fetters; man invents
Not one of those discoveries sublime
That couples his poor name with consequence.
The world had moved a million years or so
Ere Galileo blundered into prison
For telling how we are compelled to go.
The fog of superstition had not risen;
And he whose brain peered up above the cloud,
To widen the horizon of his thought,
Must be content to leave the gnarlish crowd
Of puppets and of priestcraft who have fought
The van of progress, immemorial time,
In fear some newly loosened truth might break
Some preconcerted dogma, deeming crime
The impulsive movement of the soul to slake
The thirst that God implanted there, to burn
Its way into the hidden and unseen,
And find new thoroughfares for its return,
And on creation's outer verge new entities to glean.
So did these primal pioneers look out
Beyond the compass of their husbandry,
And challenge their surroundings; manly, stout,
And earnest did they seek the mystic tree
Of knowledge in this Eden of the West,
Not interdicted by Divine decree,
But always open to the manly quest
And the unflagging purpose to be free.
The zodiac gave up its lettered scroll
To their inquiries; and the measured year
Unsealed the clasp that held it from control,
And truths that had seemed very far, revealed themselves
quite near.

Their rudely fashioned lodges soon gave way
To buildings of a more pretentious form;
The forests and the quarries and the clay
Were forced to human vassalage. The charm
That held the forest templary from spoil
Was not entirely broken; after years
And Christian conquest must consume the toil
And travail of the centuries. Our tears,
Are but a poor atonement for the brand
Our westward march has made on Nature's back.
We mourn our forest fastnesses too late;
With hand unbridled we have torn their face,
And given legal sanction to their fate--
But what companionship can take their place?
Nearest to Nature's very heart of hearts,
The verdant monarchs beckon us to God;
Their benison with life alone departs;
They testify of Eden from the sod.
O man! that thy perfection should be lost,
When so much perfectness is left on earth!
How much of bitterness! With what a cost
Didst thou forget the sacred touch that hallowed thee
at birth!

The worship of Hurakin, "Heart of Heaven,"
Spoke of a healthier, higher growth of soul,
The consciousness of sins to be forgiven;
A god, whom weakness could at once control;
A prophecy, of Fatherhood to come;
A ray that pencils from the "great white throne;"
A voice to energies, that had been dumb
For many centuries--prophetic groan
Of man's insatiate thirst for betterment,
Not all in vain. The white-winged dove of peace
For many years was theirs; they came and went
Beyond their borders, without let or lease;
Found sunnier climes to South; and, as a charm
Was laid upon their footsteps, they advance
To hover closer to their ancient god.
They still were pliant to his fateful glance,
And scanned his burnished surface to inquire
His potency in human destiny.
They had forgot the legend of his fire,
Yet, from his searching, steadfast eye, not one of them
were free.

So pass they out from the historic ken--
Theirs, no aggressive way-mark on the earth.
We linger on their passage, and the pen
Would gladly pour regret upon the dearth
Of the indentures they have left to mark
Their peaceful, noiseless tread upon the shore;
But it is vain; yet out of all this dark,
One lesson may we glean: That evermore
The souls that move with nature on her march
Are those who drop, as she drops down her leaves;
They fill the earth with fruitfulness, and arch
The highway of the nations with their sheaves;
They sleep to history, but wake to God;
Theirs is the pass-key through eternal gates;
They write no vengeful Sanscrit on the sod;
They linger at no earthly court, but the recording seraph
waits
To write them blessed of the Lord, the jewels of the fates.

THE AZTECS--AZTLAN.

The silver current of the upper Grande,
And where the Gila penetrates the East,
The Zuni lines its rocky bed with sand,
New ground from granite that has been released
From mountain base. The vertebrate Madre
Breaks into several center-stays of spine,
Which form the watershed that feeds the sea,
On either side the sunny slopes recline.
Where Coronado laid in after years
The scepter of his Sovereign, and bespoke
The unbroke silence, as the cycle nears
The bending of the neck to Hispagniola's yoke.

Here was the fabled Aztlan; and the race,
Whose ancestry had circled half the globe,
Have now their latest destiny to face.
O! could they peer the darkness through, and probe
The deep recesses of impending time!
Look for one moment on what was to be!
How would they cling to this rude mountain clime,
And bar the door of their futurity!

The Aztecs were a proud and prowent race;
In the dispersal at the far Northeast,
Now many years, they held the leading place;
Yet, in their husbandry, they were the least.
Their hands were skilled to turbulence and strife;
The bow, the lance, and the rude hunter's knife--
Such were their ready implements; but peace
Found them all unacquainted; her surcease
Requires a range of weaponry diverse.
The hands that hew down others, lips that curse,
Both must be newly christened; and the arts
That unify the race with nature's ways
Must hard their hands and reimburse their hearts,
And time their lips with sunnier kinds of lays.

As if to fill the interim, there grew
From their own ranks, the fittest kind of guide,
A pastoral leader; who by instinct knew
The flowery paths that lead on either side
The verdant fields of husbandry and thrift;
The worthy Moctheuzoma[B] had this gift,
And led them to the conquest of the soil--
That easy conquering that seeks its spoil
Only where God intended it for man,
The fruits of his own labor. Thus began
An era of self-discipline, that led
The Aztecs on to greatness; and that shed
A tender halo over after years,
When memory will mingle with our tears.

He turned their eyes upon the talcite ledge,
And said: "Behold, this is Tonatuah's pledge
Of providence against the Summer's heat
And the cold frosts of Winter; quarry it,
And fashion it for framework to your homes.
For centuries it has withstood the storm,
"To wait upon your coming; let your feet
Be busy with its treasures." Then he turned
To where the clay, for years, had been inurned,
And said: "Make use of this; 'tis Thaloc's[C] gift.
The mighty thunderer hath torn it down,
And ground it into ashes, for your use;
Mold it in shapely fragments, and the sun,
The warm-faced Tonatuah, will pour out
His warmest rays to bake it back to stone.
And more, this pliant clay has aptitudes
For vessels of all kinds, and yours are rude;
So in a hundred ways you may improve."

Then, pointing to the forest, thus he spoke:
"There Tonatu' and Thaloc both did shake
Their well-filled branches to the earth for us,
That we might gather fruit, for any taste.
These noble trees have swelled the turf for years,
And now will bend the neck for our support.
We must be provident; for they do point
Their myriad fingers to the hands that gave,
Mute monitors, to beckon us of Heaven.

"The fish and fowl, and all the vast menage
That track our mountain slopes, are all our own.
But look out on the earth, whose grassy turf
Lifts up its thousand homages to Heaven;
"Whence must we gather fruit of our own toil.
The maize will grow if planted; the legume
Will ripen; and our hands will surely fill,
If we but ask the earth and gods to help
And second our endeavors. We must work.
The river, from the mountain, rushes on;
The mountain shakes its thousand plumes at her;
The stars do not keep quiet in the skies;
All nature is alert and on the watch;
And man must bear his burden at the mill."

Thus, did he lead them to their better selves,
And ravel out the intricates of life
In wisdom's stern and simple litany;
Gave trenchent lessons to the man and wife,
And scattered homes upon new harvest fields.
And he, who sets a household altar up,
And sanctifies it with the name of home,
Fresh sprinkled from the sacred nuptial cup,
Is Heaven's Ambassador in human form.
The hearthstone is the herald of advance;
The hanging of each homely crane, like one
Of God's unnumbered irridescent plants,
Sheds rainbow hues on all it shines upon,
And blessings bend each limb upon its tree.
Thrice happy is the nation thus begun,
For it has found the track of destiny.
The mines he opened, and laid bare the beds
Of precious minerals that underlie
The bases of our mountain chains.
"For all our wants, we have a full supply,"
Thus spake the seer. "We shall not beat in vain
Against the bars that keep our souls from flight.
Our birth is built around by providence;
Our wants are wickets to unmeasured wealth.
If we but find the turnstile to the field,
We have but half the hill of life to climb;
The other half fades out as we advance;
When we have toiled out half-way distance up,
Lo! we have found the summit, and descend.

"Thus do we work together with the gods;
If we but do our best, it is enough;
When we put out our arms, they reach to us,
Though they do span the universe, to meet
And draw us up, the shining heights of life.
So in our daily plodding; if we sow,
The gods will furnish harvest; if we build,
The gods have made the quarry and the clay;
Whatever purposes we have in life,
If they be only for our betterment,
The crude material is at our hands;
We only fashion it to suit our wants;
Nor is the measure stinted to our needs,
But all our vessels fill to overflow
"Look over the green fields! Great is our want,
But greater the supply; on every hand
The wild flowers lift their heads, and what are these
But kisses thrown from Heaven to win us back?
Our appetites are but our weaker parts,
And easy satisfied; not so our souls;
They have external longings to supply;
And all that beautifies and brightens earth
Are forecasts of a kingdom yet to come.
As on earth's surface may be found the flowers,
So, underneath the shining metals are
The surplus of a generous providence.
Our fathers, on the borders of the lakes,
Did fashion implements of husbandry
From inexhaustive mines; but here we have
In lesser quantities, much brighter ores,
Fit mostly for adornment and exchange.

"Man is not satisfied with 'hand to mouth.'
The beasts roam through the forests and are filled,
And therewith are content; not so with man.
Two worlds break on his vision; and the one
Must interlock the other in his life,
Or he goes blindly out into the night.
And it is well earth gives no perfect rest,
Or the hereafter would fall out of sight.
Man is the one ambitious animal
Who seeks for empire, as the brute seeks food;
The tame necessities are not enough,
But all the precious under flowers of earth
Must fill the measure of his discontent.
All men are not alike, and some must hold
The fullest measure of life's luxuries;
These pay their surplus for the others' toil;
With them the shining metals will be held
As medium for barter and for trade.
And as Earth decks her bosom with the flowers,
So will the human race adorn themselves
And blossom out with variance of gems."

Though, still encumbered with their ancient myths,
He pointed out the harmony of Heaven;
Gave why and wherefore to the dread eclipse.
Not his to tell them how the earth is driven
Upon its swinging orbit over space;
And yet he measured out the perfect year;
He looked stern Nature bravely in the face,
And seemed to question her without a fear.
Transcendent genius; thus to grapple Truth
Across the path still covered from his sight,
Yet is she merciful; her name is Ruth;
She never perches on so grand a height,
But she will answer to her children's call,
And spread her wings to fly to their embrace--
This link was never broken by our fall,
And writes Evangel on our troubled race.
With his own hand he led them to the field,
With his own hand he taught them how to build;
He showed them what true husbandry would yield,
How all their empty measures could be filled
By wakeful industry. "Well pointed toil
Is touchstone to earth's treasure-box," said he.
"Our fathers may enrich us with their spoil,
And we may thus evade the beaten path;
Yet, lying dormant on our fathers' beds,
Our waste brings want upon our children's heads.
Far better that each hand be labor-marked,
That all may know the purchase of their lives;
He loses half the journey who goes out
To the incertitudes of other worlds,
Who has not tasted what his hands have won
On this, his trial sphere."

Thus in well-chosen words, and earnest deeds,
He planted fruit that crowded out the weeds.
Ruled by divinest right of master-mind,
By wisdom and humility combined,
By heart, as well as head and hand, he wrought;
For there be many who can ne'er be taught
By any else than throbbing 'gainst their own,
Of some great royal heart; this is their throne;
And he who sways in scepterhood of love,
Gets his vicegerent from the throne above.
Through many years did Moctheuzoma reign;
And Aztlan prospered, and the race grew strong;
And when his body passed to earth again,
His spirit, with its wisdom, lingered long.

Thus, with a twilight halo pass the great
Across the threshold with a noiseless tread;
We linger but a moment at the gate
To pay our homage to the honored dead;
Then turn to find them still inurned with us.
Their silence is more eloquent than words,
Their passing out is but life's overplus,
Their tongues are tempered into two-edged swords.
They speak across the chasm of their graves,
In weightier words, in thoughts far more intense;
In life they mingled with its thousand waves--
It is God's way; death ripens eloquence.

Time trolls along with its unceasing march,
And Aztlan has outgrown her former bounds;
She holds the center of the ancient arch,
On the historic ladder's highest rounds.
She sways the queenly scepter of the past
Above the waymarks of a hundred realms;
Yet leaves but hints of the grand overcast,
Through which she burns her way, and overwhelms
Our thoughts with all the possibles of time.
We can but poorly comprehend, yet write her most sublime.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Mexitli, Toltec for Mexico, also the god of war.

[B] Moctheuzoma, the original Aztec name for Montezuma, commonly spoken of as the Elder Montezuma, a pastoral leader still remembered in their legends.

[C] Thaloc, the Aztec god of the lightning.

PART THIRD.

ANAHUAC.[D]

THE AZTEC'S JOURNEY AND SETTLEMENT SOUTH.

Another turn of fortune's fickle wheel.
They journey to the South, and cast their lot
Upon Mexitli's lovely plain; the heel
Of other nations has forestalled the spot,
And they must win their way through turbulence
To reach the border of the placid lake,
Where conquest waits their hardly purchased chance;
And all of Anahuac shall feel the shake
Of their unconquered tread. Not many years
Ere nation follows nation to their thrall;
And many are the hot, convulsive tears,
Through which we read of any people's fall.
Our homes and hearthstones are so near the same,
Or column-capped, or made of homely clay--
Marble and gold can make no higher claim
Than thatch or brushwood, so they bear the name
Of household, hallowed for centuries or held but for a day.
As if to track a thousand similes
Of thorn and rose, of laughter and of tears,
War strikes its hand upon all sacristies;
(Religion must be bent to its decrees)
Holding our destinies--our hopes and fears
Are all within its baleful balance thrown.
It beats upon the organ of our lives, and history repeats
the wild, discordant moan.
So nations, whose lost anchorage must pay
The penalty of their forgetfulness,
Seek out phantasmal deities to prey
Upon their vitals in their sore distress.

Mars, or Mexitli[E]: though the one be crowned
With all the glory that bedecks old Rome,
The idols of the other, fiercely ground
To powdered pulp by Spain's invading host.
How much of agony they both have cost
Ask of the millions lost to life and home!
Ambition makes a Caesar: it is well
It gives some recompense for all its crime;
For it has made the earth an endless hell,
Crowding its woes upon the lap of time--
And yet, religion spurs it to the test,
And priests have been the primates of its throne,
Chanting their auguries to fire its breast,
Braying all history with their undertone.
Nor is the "manger," with its cradled Christ,
Free from the misinterpreting of Priest.
The cross where God and man have kept their tryst,
Been changed to leaven for inglorious feast--
God! must future draw its cadence from the past,
And plow its furrow through the same red mould?
Must nations be in the same furnace cast,
And man, the master, bought, and scourged, and sold?
Then is creation but a lie accursed,
And better that the doom upon it burst.
No. Though experience may slowly turn,
And man may learn as slowly, yet we learn.
The risen Christ did break the grasp of death,
And empire, dead in trespasses, will yet receive its breath.

Aztlan must pass through all the fated field
Of mythologic peculence and lore,
And to their sturdy priestcraft blindly yield,
To cipher out the destinies in store.
They must propitiate the gods with blood,
Especially their war-god must be fed,
And to supply their deities with food
Their fated subjects must be freely bled.
So superstition whets the fatal blade,
Which culminates in human sacrifice.
The maw of Huitzilopotchli[F] must be stayed,
And altars with their thousand victims rise.
Sad proof of imperfection in the race,
Nay, more, the very demon in the breast;
Their ignorance alone is plea for grace,
When in their filthiness they stand confessed.
"Ye must be born again," the Savior said;
And history, through time, has craved this birth.
Man and his Maker must indeed be wed,
If we would bring redemption to the earth.
The empty riddle of the crucifix,
The shallow rattle of the Christian creeds,
Will leaven nothing if we fail to mix
The ripened grain of soul-inspiring deeds.
The past accuses us with bony hands;
We cannot shun its cold and cruel eyes;
The glass is turning with our future sands--
We face eternal destinies. God grant we be more wise!

THE EMPIRE OF MONTEZUMA.

The Star looked down at the Mountain;
And the Mountain looked down at the Sea;
And there was no malice in either one's breast,
Each was called by the Deity
To fill its place in the region of space
Of the fathomless Yet-to-be.
The Star didn't fall on the Mountain,
Nor the Mountain smite the sea;
But each gave cheer in the other's ear,
And they dwelt in harmony.
Why didn't the Mountain say to the Star:
"Begone, with your impudent stare!"
Or the Sea to the Mountain: "How dare you intrude,
You presumptuous imp of the air?"
Why didn't they? they were not human;
They couldn't talk, as we talk;
They were not born of a woman;
They never had learned to walk.

They had learned the language of patience;
They had learned to bear, and be dumb;
They had learned to hold, through heat and cold,
Their load, till the Master should come.
O infinite language of silence!
O eloquent, voiceless speech!
Help us to bear the ills that are,
And fetter us each to each,
Till all our envy goes out with the Sea,
And our malice goes out with the star,
And we silently bear what is to be--
Like the Mountain--gazing afar
To the infinite depths of an endless world,
Where eternity spreads its zone,
Where planets, countless as grains of sand,
Gaze out on the "great white throne."
The pale-faced prophet Quetzalcoatl[G]
Had gone to the rising sun;
In his wizard boat he was seen to float,
To where the day was begun,
Without a sail on the wings of the gale,
For the land of Tlappalan[H]
He waved back his followers from the sea,
Saying he would certainly come again,
In the golden future, yet to be,
And the gods should dwell on the earth as men.
They had made him a god, because he was good--
Not always the case in the mystic love--
They had carved his image in stone and wood,
And his shrines were built on the pyramid's floor.
They called him the god of the earth and air,
And his legends were many, and often told;
And the priests, with sacrifice and prayer,
Reaped a heavy harvest of fruit and gold.
And oft were their faces turned to the East,
To claim _his_ promise, who _was_ to come;
And they watched the surge of the gulf's green yeast,
And yet the years had continued dumb.

Nezahualcoyotl sleeps with his fathers,[I]
And his son now reigns in his stead;
His _goodness_ succeeds to the living,
But his _wisdom_ goes out with the dead,
For both in the Lord of Tezcuco
Had been richly and happily wed.
Two nations, strike hands o'er the waters,
Tezcuco and Aztlan are one,
By the league that their fathers had plighted,
Since they entered this land of the sun.
So, the King of their neighbor, Tezcuco,
Has come to the Aztec Court,
To assist them in crowning the Monarch,
A Prince of much goodly report.
He is found on the steps of the temple;
He has served, both as warrior and Priest;
He has brought many victims to slaughter--
The realm has been greatly increased
By the sturdy sway of his conquering arm.
And now, he is called to reign,
The last of his race, to fill the place,
Whose honor shall prove but a life-long pain.

Montezuma[J] was young, but his sword was old,
And the war-god was glutted with victims and gold.
A pledge of his prowess: a promise to fate,
That the nation would prosper, the King prove great.
Some men are great in sorrow--there be tears
That crystalize to diamonds at the last.
They need the weight of carbonizing years;
Yet, how they glitter after these have past!
Life needs the tempering at such a forge,
Or it would brittle at the lightest touch;
But when the burden is but one vast gorge,
The weary soul must cry, "It is too much."

Nezahualpilli[K] places the crown on his head,
And the victims bleed, and the altars burn;
The words of admonishment all are said,
And the buoyant crowd to their homes return.
"The King is dead!" "Long live the King!"
"Hail!" and "farewell!" how closely tread
The steps of the living upon the dead!
How are both touched with a single spring!
Nezahualpilli soon passes away,
And the rival King, he so lately crowned,
Divides his Kingdom, and makes a prey,
A figment, with empire's empty sound.
And Montezuma outleaps the King;
But is lord of an empire reaching the sea;
And many nations their tribute bring,
And some of the weak to the southward flee,
To pass the reach of his powerful arm,
And lift new prodigies to the sky,
To meet Earth's sunshine, shadow, and storm,
To finish the race, to falter and die.

He gathers his treasures from myriad mines.
The cotton and aloe are wove into cloth.
The banana and maize and wild forest vines,
While they load to repletion, are proof against sloth.
His palace is burnished with every hue
Of the rainbow tints of his fabulous land,
Where Nature entravails on every hand
To bring new beauties of life to view.
There are drapes of feather-cloth deftly made,
There were plumes and plushes of richest craft,
There were broidered robes where the colors played,
Like the hands that made them, dainty and daft.
His harem equaled his Ottoman peer,
There was beauty of every hue and mold--
The shy and the gay, the demure and bold--
That his provinces furnished from far and near.
As fine a collection of beauty and grace,
Of the flashing eye and the beaming face,
As is seen on the gates of the Euxine sea
At the present day, where the "powers that be,"
With the Union Jack floating above the rest,
Secures to that ill-omened bird its nest.
Their Teocallas[L] rose on every hand,
And half a hundred gods their worship claim;
Their priestcraft is a strong and haughty band;
Their Beckets and their Woolseys are the same
As those that cling upon the neck of time
Through all the feudal ages; we may choose
The leeches of the Christian Church as best--
They sucked the blood the State could not refuse,
And so did these bedizzened, of the West.
_These_ led their victims to the altars black,
_Those_ wasted theirs by torturing and pain,
The fatal "itztli," gave the parting shock
To Aztec's victims; but a blacker stain
Rests on thy skirts, thou bloody-mantled Spain!
Thou the avenger of a human wrong?
As well might Lucifer enrobe as saint,
An earthquake key the carol of a song,
Or old Caligula[M] bring a complaint!
"They slew their thousands!" yes; and what did'st thou?
Thy thousands in the shadow of the cross;
They took not on their perjured lips thy vow;
Thy gold they did not mingle with their dross.
Through all the dark of ages did they grope;
Through all the light of empire did'st thou graze;
They pinioned superstition to their hope;
The monody of hell was mingled with thy praise.
Go back! and scour the oxyd from the gem
Thy lips have turned to ebony, and paint
Humiliation on thy doorsteps. Stem!
Stem the black pool of Styx! and find a saint
Whose blood shall gain forgiveness for thy past;
But count no beads upon the path of time--
Earth's execration is too justly cast--
Thy very name, a synonym of crime!

They had their courts where justice was dispensed
With what would shame the Janus-faced machine
We call our jurisprudence. They commenced
What Christian polity was left to glean,
To her advantage in the after time.
We write "anathema" above the gates
Of what we choose to call "barbaric clime;"
And yet, the blinded goddess often waits
To gather wisdom at _her_ bare, black feet
Which, bruised and blistered, tread the narrow way
To where the graces uninspired meet
And superstition's night breaks into day.

They held the bond of family and home
As firmly as more favored nations hold;
Their homes were castles, where no man could come
Without the potent ses-a-me of gold.
The wealthy pluralized the name of wife
(As many Bible patriarchs once did),
Their virtue was the average of life--
There were excrescences not easy hid.
Yet woman was more near her half of earth
Than she had reached in most of Christendom.
She held her value and could claim her worth;
Not bartered with the readiness of some
Self-styled enlightened. Much is to be learned
In corners of the earth that we call "dark,"
Where jewels are for centuries inurned
That torches of enlightenment may tarnish with a spark.

We lay rude hands on temples not our own,
Nor little heed the human souls enshrined;
The sacred crevice of each hard-marked stone
But coldly cover with the virdict, "blind."
God help us, that we point a hand more pure,
And raise the casement with a grander trust;
The hands that lift it must indeed be clean,
Or comes the humbling challenge, "Is it just?"
One "great white throne" shall judge us, one and all;
One great white Hand shall hold the scales of fate,
Or clothed in light, or covered with a pall,
We tread the way through one eternal gate.
God grant the temples we so rudely spoil,
May not accuse us when we stand alone!
But hearts are human things, and they do coil
The infinite in blindness. Not a groan
Escapes the index of the Father Son.
A child in blindness still is but a child,
And held with greater yearning to be won.
Our cold, hard hands cannot be reconciled
To one warm Heart that throbs for all mankind,
And covers, with a common love, the race;
And leads, with greater tenderness, the blind,
That they more closely feel His clasp, who cannot see His
face.

The arts of husbandry were well advanced:
They sowed and reaped unstinted from the soil;
The sun, with ripening fervor, on them glanced,
And gave them back, a hundred fold, their toil.
They had not lost their ancient faith in him,
Though other gods their scattered homage claim
His breast was their Elysian; never dim
The ancient hope that hung upon his name.
Their maize and maguey shone upon the plain,
Their chocolate gave nourishment and zest,
The corn gave recompense for sugar-cane,
Their banquets were provided with the best;
Fish from the ocean, fruits from every clime,
So diverse, yet within such easy reach;
The tropics and the temperates enchime
With all their plumaged babblings of speech;
And they interpreted the varied whims
That Nature holds embryoed in her breast.
They climbed the boughs and shook her heaviest limbs,
Too burdened for the garner to be missed.
This ancient mother never yet has failed
Her children in their earnest search for food;
She may be panoplied and heavy mailed,
Yet does her larder furnish all when fully understood.

Take all in all, and measure by the test--
The stern, hard test of history--and we find
That Aztlan, very far from being best,
Still was a prodigy. That she was blind
In her religious ethics, none deny;
That she had faults, no champion gainsays;
She lifted bloody hands against the sky;
She filled the avenging measure of her days.
But God is God, and man is always man;
And earthly judgment is at best a snare.
And never, since the human race began,
Has turned to Heaven more piteous despair
Than her sad eyes, burnt out with agony;
Moaning above her nation, and her name,
The bitter monody of "Not to be,"
The deep humiliation, and the shame
That sent her crouching at the foot of Spain;
(The fairest daughter of the wilderness)
Without a hand to solace in her pain,
Or ray of hope to lighten her distress.

Could she been gently led, and tenderly,
To higher life and holier resolve,
Had charity bent forth her noble sway,
The Christian graces that with Earth revolve
Without the wasting friction, paid their suit
To win her back to wakefulness from sin--
How would she compensate the victor's hand,
And kiss the rod that smote with its regard!
But to be "drawn and quartered" like the brute,
And made the sport of passion; to begin
A life of vassalage, with such a slave
Yclept as master, claiming from above
The license that Jehovah never gave
Except the iron hand was woven o'er with love--
It is too much! God's justice is not lame.
Hypocrisy may steal and wear the cloak,
And don the ermine, with its fair, false claim;
With crucifix and litany may croak;
But Time o'ertakes it and it falls to earth
Like Judas on its immolating sword,
And it must learn to curse its hour of birth.
It is the pledge of destiny--the stern, unwritten word.

THE LANDING OF THE SPANIARDS.

The Courier[N], new laden from the coast,
Has hastened to the council of the King
With most portentious tidings: picture-prints
That tell of boats that float upon the wing;
And pale-faced warriors, clad in shining scales.
The monarch hears with trembling; he has long
Looked for the coming of great Quetzalcoatl,
And, though he felt his nation to be strong,
Yet had he feared his reign would be the last.
The oracles had read him overcast,
With some impending destiny--the ruse
Which priests have always found to compass their abuse.

The chiefs of church and state are all convened
To canvas, and compare their theories,
And much of wisdom surely can be gleaned
From these firm-visaged counsellors of his;
And Montezuma[O] is the first to speak--
His dark, sad eyes are beautifully bright;
He was not philosophic like the Greek,
And yet his words made glitter of the night:

"We swing upon the hinges of our fate,
Most reverend priests and worthy counsellors,
And it is well we counsel and conform
Our future to the fashion of events.
The rising sun has sent inquiring rays
For many years, to greet our coming god,
And lo! he now turns back from Tlapalan;
"And what must we, but welcome his advance?
Ye long have held me kindred of the gods;
Yet I deny me what your partial eyes
Have kenned upon my unassuming face.
I am as other men, though more advanced;
And if great Quetzalcoatl takes back my crown,
I bow in humble vassalage to him.
For what am I, to question his advance?
A moth, upon the torches' fervent ray;
An anthill, at the foot of 'Catapetl.

And I have sometimes thought most worthy priests,
That we have drawn the lightning from the cloud
By a mistaken worship of the gods.
No one will question my religious zeal,
For I brought many victims to the block;
But human blood doth have a subtile voice
That reaches ears our eyes have never seen;
And though the itztli opens to the heart,
Some heart may beat far out in open space
That whispers its avengement on the air.
Our gods have brought us victory, 'tis true;
And yet, great Nezahualcoyotl did spurn
The shedding of all human blood, to gods;
And when great Quetzalcoatl was on the earth,
Our gods were satisfied with other blood.
The angels of the mighty past cry out
Against the damning practice. Why not now,
"For once and all, wash off our bloody hands?
These human cries pierce farther than we know;
These human souls may ride into the sun;
We cannot claim his broad, uncumbered breast,
To the exclusion of the rest of earth.
The god of earth and air may come to judge
At this dark moment for this very sin;
Then let us look him boldly in the face,
And if we have offended, make amends;
If our mistaken zeal has overdone,
Surely his heart will cover up our faults,
And we may thus propitiate his wrath."

Then rose the ancient High Priest, Tlalocan,[P]
And in his sternest manner, thus he spake:
"Great Montezuma! king, of earthly kings!
The heart of Tlalocan is bruised and broke
To hear the words his monarch has vouchsafed
Such sacrilege belongeth not to kings;
Great Huitzilopotchli must, indeed, be strayed,
Or, he will shake his thunders on the earth,
And, strike the Aztecs from the face of him.
War is the wastage of all human flesh,
And whether man be stricken on the field,
Or, with the sacred itztli, offered up,
The measure must be met with human blood.

"Thy empire has been purchased at this price,
And cannot otherwise perpetuate.
The earth and heaven, both have set their mark
Upon the bosom of the placid lake;
And by the coming of those fiery stars,
That flashed their baleful faces in the sky,
All omenous that anger brooded o'er,
The gods have read the purpose of your soul;
And thus forwarn you that you must retract.
They cry for victims and must be appeased;
They gave you conquest without stay or stint,
When you did furnish, full to their desire;
But there are few within the shambles now,
And they must be replenished, or the doom,
That has forshadowed on the Eastern sky,
Will flash and fall upon your naked head.
Great Quetzalcoatl will come and strike you down,
And grind you into ashes in his wrath."

Then spoke the sturdy Counselor Teuhtlile[Q]:
"Tlalocan holds the nearest place to heaven,
And in his zeal, doth sound the ready key
That rhythms with your empire. We must suit
Our action with his words, or we are lost.
These pale-faced warriors must be met with alms;
The gods must be appeased with fresh supplies.

"Let me, myself, go down upon the coast,
And with our ready painters bring you back
A full account of what we look upon.
And if, perchance, these be the van of him
Whose coming we have watched these many years,
Then will we counsel further the emprise,
And in the watch and wake of all events,
Be not o'ertaken, but forestall the time."

"Your counsel has the sanction it desires;
I would not measure lances with the gods,"
The monarch answered: "In the dust I bend,
And plead the weakness of a human heart.
The South shall furnish victims for the block;
And Teuhtlile shall repair him to the coast;
The dread monition of the flaming stars
May be evaded with our ready zest.
Our gold and precious stones, with lavish hand,
Shall be poured out to coy them from our track;
For what are all the earth's indulgences,
Against the smiling favor of the gods?"

"Repair thou to the coast, my good Teuhtlile,
With plenteous retinue, and goodly stores;
With cotton fabrics of the latest cast;
With shields and cuirasses inlaid with gold;
The burnished mirror of the fervent sun;
The silver shining circlet of the moon;

"With robes of feather-cloth made rich with pearls;
And other trophies that your tact shall find.
Receive them kindly, as becomes their state;
And let thy wisdom gather in the full,
Their purpose and intent upon our land;
It may fall out they are as other men,
Unsanctioned at the chambers of the gods,
Yet must our moderation pave the way,
Till we have fully compassed their intent."

So said, so done; the embassy went forth
To meet the wily Spaniard on the coast;
They little dreamed of what a forest fox
They had to meet; they little knew the boast
That hung upon the challenge of their fate.
Their superstitions made them ready prey;
They opened wide their hospitable gate,
And gave the jewel of their life away.
It mattered little how they forced it back,
And tried to parley with their destiny;
The hungry lion was upon their track,
And they were lost forever and for aye.

Done in the name of Christ? Oh, spare the word!
Let not the Nazarene be buffeted;
Gold was the souvenir; the pitying Lord
Was, with this nation, just as deeply bled.
Their superstitions were the ready springs
The Spaniards played upon to break their hearts;
Deceit, as damnable as serpents' stings,
Barbed with its cruel spines their poisoned darts.

The embassy returned, and others went;
Still could they not force back this coming cloud--
The steady purpose and the black intent,
That wove with cunning fingers at their shroud.
Had Spain come as the Pilgrims at Cape Cod,
Or Penn upon the Delaware, to lead
The Aztec back to fatherhood and God,
And let their sturdy manhood for them plead,
How ready could their faces been upturned,
And hearts been melted into Christian mold!--
The brand of hell was on their bare backs burned,
And they were ground to ashes for their gold!

Did Christ e'er suffer such supreme disgrace?
Or on the cross; or in Gethsemane?
Did heavier drops of blood stand on his face
Than there were forced by this foul treachery?
Oh! how the patient Nazarene must bend
And break beneath fresh crosses every day--
Fresh Judases betraying him as friend,
And scorpions to sting him in the way!
Thank God! the time is coming when, as Judge,
The Man of Sorrows, ermined and supreme,
No longer as a packhorse or a drudge,
Shall hold the scales and watch the balance beam!

How heavy did he make the widow's mite;
How do the tears of men bend down the scale;
How ponderous is a pennyweight of right;
How do the little things of life prevail!
The Spanish Conquest, sometime, will be tried
Against the heart Malinche[R] threw away,
And Aztec's tears be placed against your pride.
O Hispagniola! you will rue the day--
A feather and a mountain to be weighed--
How shall the beam fly up at your disgrace,
How shall your curse, a hundred fold, be paid,
And what a glory light up Aztlan's face!

You came, like tender shepherds to the fold,
Yet, like a wolf, you tore the frighted flock;
You kissed but to decoy them from their gold;
Your seeming calm was but the earthquake's shock.
Your empty babble of the cross and Christ,
Was but the mask to cover your deceit;
Your hearts were canker, but your words enticed,
And _never_ did a fouler scheme make conquest more complete.

Not Aztlan, with her bare and bleeding breast,
Alone, hath felt thy treachery too late;
Columbus, in his chains and sorely pressed,
Bends to thy penalty for being great.
A thousand white-robed saints with bony palms
Shake their accusing fingers in thy face;
Their bodies burned, their souls changed into psalms.
To chant in mournful cadence thy disgrace.

ARRIVAL OF THE SPANIARDS AT MEXICO.

November comes as Autumn's requiem,
To sigh and sough the harvest, and the field,
The winged ecstatics mourn, and then are dumb,
And life and growth in full submission yield.
Mexitli is not altogether clad
In nature's winding sheet of yellow leaves;
And yet her year is getting old and sad,
And youth and fruitage at his bedside grieves.
As on the lingering footsteps of the year--
A stranger and the Winter, hand in hand,
Both on the threshold as two ghosts appear.
One strikes the orbit with its wasting sand,
The other coils around the nation's throat;
The nation and the year together die;
Both on the waste of time are set afloat,
And sound alike death's mighty mystery.

In all the glitter at his vast command,
Went Montezuma to receive his guests;
If gold be great, then was it truly grand.
The royal plume upon his forehead rests;
His feet pressed soles of heavy beaten gold;
His cloak and anklets sprinkled o'er with pearls,

And only noble hands are left to hold
The blazing palanquin. Like titled Earls,
They guard the skirts of royalty from stain
Against the common people; all the same
As in our ripened age. 'Tis hard to gain
Much on the sodden march of royalty,
Where accident supplants all other claim.
The monarch in the easy prime of life,
But lightly bronzed. The glowing, mellow hue
That lit his cheek, seemed borrowed from the sun,
And shadowing a heart that beat as true
To God and country as he knew their names,--
As any monarch that e'er wore a crown.
His open-hearted welcome, like himself,
Was, as the hardy yeoman, bare and brown.

He felt that he was meeting destiny,
Yet, to its solving, he would bend the knee
With dignity and grace; not turn away,
But face it with a ready, cheerful glance,
And meeting night, surcharge it with the day;
And grasping, break, if possible, the lance
That he felt sure was leveled at his breast.
He did not know the Inquisition stood,
With rack and torture at his very gate;
That it had traveled half the world for blood
To whet its throat for St. Bartholomew
And came with ravening appetite for him.
Those wary messengers he little knew,
Or those brown eyes would suddenly grown dim,
And the warm heart would furnaced up its heat;
And he would grappled at its very throat;
And man to man, and blood to blood, would meet,
And not a plume above one corselet float
To bear the story back of it to Spain.
They were not schooled in all the arts of war,
Nor were they wise in all the world's deceit;
Yet would they fought beneath their fated star,
And challenged every stubborn step, though it had proven vain.