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 Cæsar: 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.