in the midst of an illimitable and endless warfare of giants.
Some lie down to die, hopeless, cursing their helpless gods; some die by their own bands; some gather around the fires of volcanoes for warmth and light--stars that attract them from afar off; some feast on such decaying remnants of the great animals as they may find projecting above the débris, running to them, as we shall see, with outcries, and fighting over the fragments.
The references to the worship of "the morning star," which occur in the legend, seem to relate to some great volcano in the East, which alone gave light when all the world was lost in darkness. As Byron says, in his great poem, "Darkness":
And they did live by watch-fires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crownèd kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were they who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes and their mountain-torch."
In this pitiable state were once the ancestors of all mankind.
If you doubt it, reader, peruse again the foregoing legends, and then turn to the following Central American prayer, the prayer of the Aztecs, already referred to on page 186, ante, addressed to the god Tezcatlipoca, himself represented as a flying or winged serpent, perchance the comet:
"Is it possible that this lash and chastisement are not given for our correction and amendment, but only for our total destruction and overthrow; that the sun will never more shine upon us, but that we must remain in perpetual darkness? . . . It is a sore thing to tell how we are all in
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darkness. . . . O Lord, . . . make an end of this smoke and fog. Quench also the burning and destroying fire of thine anger; let serenity come and clearness," (light); "let the small birds of thy people begin to sing and approach the sun."
There is still another Aztec prayer, addressed to the same deity, equally able, sublime, and pathetic, which it seems to me may have been uttered when the people had left their biding-place, when the conflagration had passed, but while darkness still covered the earth, before vegetation had returned, and while crops of grain as yet were not. There are a few words in it that do not answer to this interpretation, where it refers to those "people who have something"; but there may have been comparative differences of condition even in the universal poverty; or these words may have been an interpolation of later days. The prayer is as follows: