The Bride of Huitzil—An Aztec Legend

An Aztec Legend
HERVEY ALLEN
NEW YORK James F. Drake, Inc. 1922
COPYRIGHT 1922, BY HERVEY ALLEN
To a dead child


THE BRIDE OF HUITZIL
Here begins the first scroll with the sign of a bundle of reeds tied about with a string, which is the symbol of fifty-two years.
Now when the moon was fully grown, The king left his abode To sit upon the judgment throne Set in the Place of God, Massive with polished seat of jade; A skull was his footstool. The arras on the wall was made Of beasts' hair wove like wool.
There, while a scribe announced the dower, The women came, so fair— Young warriors whispered, and their plumes Bent, nodding, as when air Of summer stirs the fronded trees Along a mountain wall, Where pigeons' wooings lull the breeze And snow-fed rivers fall.