From sire to son the stern bequeathment falls
Of some misguided action in the past,
And, though our nature with the victim calls
And we are smitten with his overcast,
Still are we weak against the wheels of fate,
Which leaves the pensioner thus desolate.
The by-ways of the father must turn back
Sometime upon the highway that he left;
Though dark and sinuous may be the track,
And life of all its luster be bereft,
Still hangs the heavy impulse on the soul,
Unsatisfied, till it shall reach its goal.
The destiny was hard that brought proud Spain
Upon the fading summerland of gold;
Its retribution is no less a pain;
The grip of fate, so pulseless and so cold,
Brings back the shudder to the human heart;
Humanity is wounded with each part
That feels the puncture of her cruel blade.
Nor is the censure less upon the hand
That strikes so hard to force the debt thus paid.
The tender conquest of some heathen land
The brightest jewel is, of any crown—
God never licensed human hand to strike a foe when down.
When Spain's recruited army turned them back
To glut their ire on Guatamozin's head,
There never was a deeper furrowed track,
More thickly cindered with the myriad dead;
And when at last his bloody sceptre fell,
Tenochtitlan was likest to a hell.
The brave barbarian was put to rack
To force divulgence of his scattered gold.—
Is there a garment of a deeper black,
To cover up the fingers that could hold
Such hellish orgies after all the past?
The palm is thine, O Spain! and hold it to the last!
Yet one more turn upon the screw of time:
Thy red, right hand must slay this waif of fate;
And thou must put the climax to the crime,
And crush the heart thou has made desolate.
Enough! thou art the acme of the earth—
May God's great pity ever spare thy duplicated birth!
No, no, not Spain! her better angel waits,
And has been waiting all these weary years
For Castellar to open wide her gates,
That she may wash her garments with her tears;
But priestcraft, Rome, or demon, all the same—
That makes a desert of her rich champaign;
And sends her forth through history, so tame.
It is, her evil genius; but it is not Spain.
As Kohen prophesied, their race was run—
Their error cleaved upon them as a curse;
The fading phalanx of the Summer sun
Has crossed the borders of the universe.
We only catch the shadow of their flight;
They pass out with the sunset into night.
MALINCHE.
INTRODUCTION.
I may properly place "Malinche" as supplementary to "Montezuma," as dealing with characters coincident to, and cotemporaneous with those concerned in the "Conquest," and also as covering a period subsequent to, and immediately succeeding the Conquest.