Seized himself the precious banner,
He, the leader, and he bore it
On his steed till tow’rd the evening,
When the fight at length was over.
On that day a hundred Spaniards
Fell, and sixty in addition;
Eighty more alive were taken
By the Indians’ cruel hands.
Many of them sorely wounded,
Who ere long their breath surrender’d
And a dozen horses, too, were
Partly kill’d and partly captured.
Cortez and his army only
Just at evening gain’d the shelter
Of the shore, a seacoast planted
Niggardly with weeping willows.
2.
When the battle day is over,
Comes the frantic night of triumph
So in Mexico a hundred
Thousand lamps of joy are flaring;
Hundred thousand lamps of joy, with
Woodpine torches, pitch-ring fires,
Throw a light as clear as daylight
Over palaces and temples,
And guildhouses,—likewise over
Vitzliputzli’s splendid temple,
Idol-fortress built of red brick,
Strangely like the old Egyptian,
Babylonian, and Assyrian
Monster buildings so colossal,
As we see them in the pictures
Of the English Henry Martin.[77]
Yes, it is the same broad staircase,
So exceeding broad, that on it
Many thousand Mexicans
Up and down are walking freely,