Montezuma: An Epic on the Origin and Fate of the Aztec Nation

by Hiram Hoyt Richmond

Nezahualcoyotl sleeps with his fathers,[I]
And his son now reigns in his stead;
His goodness succeeds to the living,
But his wisdom goes out with the dead,
For both in the Lord of Tezcuco
Had been richly and happily wed.
Two nations, strike hands o'er the waters,
Tezcuco and Aztlan are one,
By the league that their fathers had plighted,
Since they entered this land of the sun.
So, the King of their neighbor, Tezcuco,
Has come to the Aztec Court,
To assist them in crowning the Monarch,
A Prince of much goodly report.
He is found on the steps of the temple;
He has served, both as warrior and Priest;
He has brought many victims to slaughter—
The realm has been greatly increased
By the sturdy sway of his conquering arm.
And now, he is called to reign,
The last of his race, to fill the place,
Whose honor shall prove but a life-long pain.
Montezuma[J] was young, but his sword was old,
And the war-god was glutted with victims and gold.
A pledge of his prowess: a promise to fate,
That the nation would prosper, the King prove great.
Some men are great in sorrow—there be tears
That crystalize to diamonds at the last.
They need the weight of carbonizing years;
Yet, how they glitter after these have past!
Life needs the tempering at such a forge,
Or it would brittle at the lightest touch;
But when the burden is but one vast gorge,
The weary soul must cry, "It is too much."

Nezahualpilli[K] places the crown on his head,
And the victims bleed, and the altars burn;
The words of admonishment all are said,
And the buoyant crowd to their homes return.
"The King is dead!" "Long live the King!"
"Hail!" and "farewell!" how closely tread
The steps of the living upon the dead!
How are both touched with a single spring!
Nezahualpilli soon passes away,
And the rival King, he so lately crowned,
Divides his Kingdom, and makes a prey,
A figment, with empire's empty sound.
And Montezuma outleaps the King;
But is lord of an empire reaching the sea;
And many nations their tribute bring,
And some of the weak to the southward flee,
To pass the reach of his powerful arm,
And lift new prodigies to the sky,
To meet Earth's sunshine, shadow, and storm,
To finish the race, to falter and die.

He gathers his treasures from myriad mines.
The cotton and aloe are wove into cloth.
The banana and maize and wild forest vines,
While they load to repletion, are proof against sloth.
His palace is burnished with every hue
Of the rainbow tints of his fabulous land,
Where Nature entravails on every hand
To bring new beauties of life to view.
There are drapes of feather-cloth deftly made,
There were plumes and plushes of richest craft,
There were broidered robes where the colors played,
Like the hands that made them, dainty and daft.
His harem equaled his Ottoman peer,
There was beauty of every hue and mold—
The shy and the gay, the demure and bold—
That his provinces furnished from far and near.
As fine a collection of beauty and grace,
Of the flashing eye and the beaming face,
As is seen on the gates of the Euxine sea
At the present day, where the "powers that be,"
With the Union Jack floating above the rest,
Secures to that ill-omened bird its nest.
Their Teocallas[L] rose on every hand,
And half a hundred gods their worship claim;
Their priestcraft is a strong and haughty band;
Their Beckets and their Woolseys are the same
As those that cling upon the neck of time
Through all the feudal ages; we may choose
The leeches of the Christian Church as best—
They sucked the blood the State could not refuse,
And so did these bedizzened, of the West.
These led their victims to the altars black,
Those wasted theirs by torturing and pain,
The fatal "itztli," gave the parting shock
To Aztec's victims; but a blacker stain
Rests on thy skirts, thou bloody-mantled Spain!
Thou the avenger of a human wrong?
As well might Lucifer enrobe as saint,
An earthquake key the carol of a song,
Or old Caligula[M] bring a complaint!
"They slew their thousands!" yes; and what did'st thou?
Thy thousands in the shadow of the cross;
They took not on their perjured lips thy vow;
Thy gold they did not mingle with their dross.
Through all the dark of ages did they grope;
Through all the light of empire did'st thou graze;
They pinioned superstition to their hope;
The monody of hell was mingled with thy praise.
Go back! and scour the oxyd from the gem
Thy lips have turned to ebony, and paint
Humiliation on thy doorsteps. Stem!
Stem the black pool of Styx! and find a saint
Whose blood shall gain forgiveness for thy past;
But count no beads upon the path of time—
Earth's execration is too justly cast—
Thy very name, a synonym of crime!

They had their courts where justice was dispensed
With what would shame the Janus-faced machine
We call our jurisprudence. They commenced
What Christian polity was left to glean,
To her advantage in the after time.
We write "anathema" above the gates
Of what we choose to call "barbaric clime;"
And yet, the blinded goddess often waits
To gather wisdom at her bare, black feet
Which, bruised and blistered, tread the narrow way
To where the graces uninspired meet
And superstition's night breaks into day.
They held the bond of family and home
As firmly as more favored nations hold;
Their homes were castles, where no man could come
Without the potent ses-a-me of gold.
The wealthy pluralized the name of wife
(As many Bible patriarchs once did),
Their virtue was the average of life—
There were excrescences not easy hid.
Yet woman was more near her half of earth
Than she had reached in most of Christendom.
She held her value and could claim her worth;
Not bartered with the readiness of some
Self-styled enlightened. Much is to be learned
In corners of the earth that we call "dark,"
Where jewels are for centuries inurned
That torches of enlightenment may tarnish with a spark.
We lay rude hands on temples not our own,
Nor little heed the human souls enshrined;
The sacred crevice of each hard-marked stone
But coldly cover with the virdict, "blind."
God help us, that we point a hand more pure,
And raise the casement with a grander trust;
The hands that lift it must indeed be clean,
Or comes the humbling challenge, "Is it just?"
One "great white throne" shall judge us, one and all;
One great white Hand shall hold the scales of fate,
Or clothed in light, or covered with a pall,
We tread the way through one eternal gate.
God grant the temples we so rudely spoil,
May not accuse us when we stand alone!
But hearts are human things, and they do coil
The infinite in blindness. Not a groan
Escapes the index of the Father Son.
A child in blindness still is but a child,
And held with greater yearning to be won.
Our cold, hard hands cannot be reconciled
To one warm Heart that throbs for all mankind,
And covers, with a common love, the race;
And leads, with greater tenderness, the blind,
That they more closely feel His clasp, who cannot see His face.
The arts of husbandry were well advanced:
They sowed and reaped unstinted from the soil;
The sun, with ripening fervor, on them glanced,
And gave them back, a hundred fold, their toil.
They had not lost their ancient faith in him,
Though other gods their scattered homage claim
His breast was their Elysian; never dim
The ancient hope that hung upon his name.
Their maize and maguey shone upon the plain,
Their chocolate gave nourishment and zest,
The corn gave recompense for sugar-cane,
Their banquets were provided with the best;
Fish from the ocean, fruits from every clime,
So diverse, yet within such easy reach;
The tropics and the temperates enchime
With all their plumaged babblings of speech;
And they interpreted the varied whims
That Nature holds embryoed in her breast.
They climbed the boughs and shook her heaviest limbs,
Too burdened for the garner to be missed.
This ancient mother never yet has failed
Her children in their earnest search for food;
She may be panoplied and heavy mailed,
Yet does her larder furnish all when fully understood.
Take all in all, and measure by the test—
The stern, hard test of history—and we find
That Aztlan, very far from being best,
Still was a prodigy. That she was blind
In her religious ethics, none deny;
That she had faults, no champion gainsays;
She lifted bloody hands against the sky;
She filled the avenging measure of her days.
But God is God, and man is always man;
And earthly judgment is at best a snare.
And never, since the human race began,
Has turned to Heaven more piteous despair
Than her sad eyes, burnt out with agony;
Moaning above her nation, and her name,
The bitter monody of "Not to be,"
The deep humiliation, and the shame
That sent her crouching at the foot of Spain;
(The fairest daughter of the wilderness)
Without a hand to solace in her pain,
Or ray of hope to lighten her distress.
Could she been gently led, and tenderly,
To higher life and holier resolve,
Had charity bent forth her noble sway,
The Christian graces that with Earth revolve
Without the wasting friction, paid their suit
To win her back to wakefulness from sin—
How would she compensate the victor's hand,
And kiss the rod that smote with its regard!
But to be "drawn and quartered" like the brute,
And made the sport of passion; to begin
A life of vassalage, with such a slave
Yclept as master, claiming from above
The license that Jehovah never gave
Except the iron hand was woven o'er with love—
It is too much! God's justice is not lame.
Hypocrisy may steal and wear the cloak,
And don the ermine, with its fair, false claim;
With crucifix and litany may croak;
But Time o'ertakes it and it falls to earth
Like Judas on its immolating sword,
And it must learn to curse its hour of birth.
It is the pledge of destiny—the stern, unwritten word.

THE LANDING OF THE SPANIARDS.

The Courier[N], new laden from the coast,
Has hastened to the council of the King
With most portentious tidings: picture-prints
That tell of boats that float upon the wing;
And pale-faced warriors, clad in shining scales.
The monarch hears with trembling; he has long
Looked for the coming of great Quetzalcoatl,
And, though he felt his nation to be strong,
Yet had he feared his reign would be the last.
The oracles had read him overcast,
With some impending destiny—the ruse
Which priests have always found to compass their abuse.

The chiefs of church and state are all convened
To canvas, and compare their theories,
And much of wisdom surely can be gleaned
From these firm-visaged counsellors of his;
And Montezuma[O] is the first to speak—
His dark, sad eyes are beautifully bright;
He was not philosophic like the Greek,
And yet his words made glitter of the night:
"We swing upon the hinges of our fate,
Most reverend priests and worthy counsellors,
And it is well we counsel and conform
Our future to the fashion of events.
The rising sun has sent inquiring rays
For many years, to greet our coming god,
And lo! he now turns back from Tlapalan;
"And what must we, but welcome his advance?
Ye long have held me kindred of the gods;
Yet I deny me what your partial eyes
Have kenned upon my unassuming face.
I am as other men, though more advanced;
And if great Quetzalcoatl takes back my crown,
I bow in humble vassalage to him.
For what am I, to question his advance?
A moth, upon the torches' fervent ray;
An anthill, at the foot of 'Catapetl.

And I have sometimes thought most worthy priests,
That we have drawn the lightning from the cloud
By a mistaken worship of the gods.
No one will question my religious zeal,
For I brought many victims to the block;
But human blood doth have a subtile voice
That reaches ears our eyes have never seen;
And though the itztli opens to the heart,
Some heart may beat far out in open space
That whispers its avengement on the air.
Our gods have brought us victory, 'tis true;
And yet, great Nezahualcoyotl did spurn
The shedding of all human blood, to gods;
And when great Quetzalcoatl was on the earth,
Our gods were satisfied with other blood.
The angels of the mighty past cry out
Against the damning practice. Why not now,
"For once and all, wash off our bloody hands?
These human cries pierce farther than we know;
These human souls may ride into the sun;
We cannot claim his broad, uncumbered breast,
To the exclusion of the rest of earth.
The god of earth and air may come to judge
At this dark moment for this very sin;
Then let us look him boldly in the face,
And if we have offended, make amends;
If our mistaken zeal has overdone,
Surely his heart will cover up our faults,
And we may thus propitiate his wrath."
Then rose the ancient High Priest, Tlalocan,[P]
And in his sternest manner, thus he spake:
"Great Montezuma! king, of earthly kings!
The heart of Tlalocan is bruised and broke
To hear the words his monarch has vouchsafed
Such sacrilege belongeth not to kings;
Great Huitzilopotchli must, indeed, be strayed,
Or, he will shake his thunders on the earth,
And, strike the Aztecs from the face of him.
War is the wastage of all human flesh,
And whether man be stricken on the field,
Or, with the sacred itztli, offered up,
The measure must be met with human blood.

"Thy empire has been purchased at this price,
And cannot otherwise perpetuate.
The earth and heaven, both have set their mark
Upon the bosom of the placid lake;
And by the coming of those fiery stars,
That flashed their baleful faces in the sky,
All omenous that anger brooded o'er,
The gods have read the purpose of your soul;
And thus forwarn you that you must retract.
They cry for victims and must be appeased;
They gave you conquest without stay or stint,
When you did furnish, full to their desire;
But there are few within the shambles now,
And they must be replenished, or the doom,
That has forshadowed on the Eastern sky,
Will flash and fall upon your naked head.
Great Quetzalcoatl will come and strike you down,
And grind you into ashes in his wrath."
Then spoke the sturdy Counselor Teuhtlile[Q]:
"Tlalocan holds the nearest place to heaven,
And in his zeal, doth sound the ready key
That rhythms with your empire. We must suit
Our action with his words, or we are lost.
These pale-faced warriors must be met with alms;
The gods must be appeased with fresh supplies.