O be joyful, Vitzliputzli!
For to-day ’tis Spanish blood,
And thou mayst refresh thy nostrils
With its warm scent greedily.
Eighty Spaniards will be slaughter’d
On this day to do thee honour—
Proud repast to grace the table
Of thy priests, who flesh delight in.
For the priest is but a mortal,
And poor man, unhappy glutton,
Cannot, like the gods, live only
On sweet smells and savoury odours.
Hark! the death-drum now is beating,
And the evil cowhorn screeches!
They proclaim the’ approaching advent
Of the victims’ sad procession.
Eighty Spaniards, vilely naked,
With their hands securely fasten’d
To their backs, are harshly driven
Up the temple’s lofty staircase.
And to Vitzliputzli’s image
They must bow the knee right humbly,
And must dance the wildest dances,
Forcibly constrain’d by tortures,
All so terrible and fearful,
That their madden’d screams of anguish
Overpow’r the whole collective
Cannibals’ wild charivari.
Poor spectators by the ocean!
Cortez and his warlike comrades
But too plainly could distinguish
All their friends’ loud cries of torment.
On the stage, too clearly lighted,
They could see, alas! too plainly,
Every figure, every gesture,—
See the knife and see the blood.
Then from off their heads their helmets
Silently they took, and kneeling,
Chaunted they the death-psalm sadly,
And they sang the De Profundis.