4. Zan temomac mania cemilhuitl in niman ye tehuatl toconyaittoaya ipalnemoani.
4. Our day is in thy hand, and soon we shall see thee, thou Giver of Life.
NOTES.
NOTES FOR SONG I.
The song is an allegory, portraying the soul-life of the poet. By the flowers which he sets forth to seek, we are to understand the songs which he desires to compose. He asks himself where the poetic inspiration is to be sought, and the answer is the same as was given by Wordsworth, that it is to the grand and beautiful scenes of Nature that the poet must turn for the elevation of soul which will lift him to the sublimest heights of his art. But this exaltation bears with it the heavy penalty that it disqualifies for ordinary joys. As in medieval tales, he who had once been admitted to fairyland, could nevermore conquer his longing to return thither, so the poet longs for some other condition of existence where the divine spirit of song may forever lift him above the trials and the littleness of this earthly life.
There is no sign of Christian influence in the poem, and it is probably one handed down from a generation anterior to the Conquest.
1. The word peuhcayotl from peua, to begin, intimates that this was a song chanted at the beginning of a musical entertainment. The verses are longer, and the phraseology plainer than in many of those following. There is also an absence of interjections and lengthened vowels, all of which indicate that the time was slow, and the actions of the singer temperate, as was the custom at the beginning of a baile. (See Introd., p. 20.)
1. Ninoyolnonotza, a reflexive, frequentative form from notza, to think, to reflect, itself from the primitive radicle no, mind, common to both the Nahuatl and Maya languages. The syllable yol is for yollotl, heart, in its figurative sense of soul or mind. The combination of yolnonotza is not found in any of the dictionaries. The full sense is, "I am thinking by myself, in my heart."