How often has the timid, trembling maid
Upon the verge of ruin sought thy help,
Shutting her eyes to pleasure and to gold
At thought of thee, O Maiden pure and meek!
Centuries and ages will have vanished by,
Within their currents bearing kings and men;
Great monuments shall fall; the pyramids
Of lonely Egypt moulder in decay;
But time shall never place its fatal hand
Upon the image of the Holy Maid,
Nor on the pious love of Mexico.
Manuel Carpio, who wrote this, his first poetic composition, in 1831, when forty years of age, was a scholar and professor, and in 1824 a congressman. He made the Bible, we are told, his favorite study; and certainly it supplied him with the themes for his best poems. But he was not the only poet of Mexico who bore earnest witness to the faith of which we speak. Padre Manuel Sartorio, who wrote about the time of Iturbide, deprecates the idea of preferring a capricious doubt respecting "la Virgen de Guadalupe" to a constant belief founded in tradition. In the following lines the nature of his own belief is fully attested:
"Of Guadalupe, that fair image pictured
Unto the venerating eye of Mexico;
With stars and light adorned, the figure painted
Of a most modest Maiden, full of grace;
What image is it? Copy 'tis divine
Of the Mother of God.
*****
In other lines on the same subject, Sartorio speaks of the Lady of Guadalupe as "the purest rose of the celestial field," and pays special respect to her image in the Portal of Flowers, of which there is a tradition, not vulgar, of having spoken (hay tradicion no vulgar de haber hablado) to the Venerable Padre Zapa, in order to instruct the Indians, as relates Cabrera, "Escudo de Armas de Mexico, numero 923." Who this Cabrera may be we are not aware, and cannot affirm that he is identical with the great painter Cabrera, whose belief in Our Lady of Guadalupe was so distinct and positive.
One other poet of Mexico we shall summon to give testimony. It is Fray Manuel Navarrete, who wrote a series of poems, well-known to his countrymen, called "Sad Moments." He was also the author of a number of tributes to the fame of Carlos IV. and Ferdinand VII., and seems to have possessed more influence, if not more merit as a poet, than Padre Sartorio. From a posthumous volume, bearing date of 1823, we take the following lines, the allusions of which sufficiently explain at what time they were written:
TO THE MOST HOLY VIRGIN UNDER THE INVOCATION OF GUADALUPE.
From her eternal palace, from the heavens,
One day descended to America,
When in its worst affliction, the great Mary,
Its sorrows to maternally console.
Behold in Tepeyac how watchfully
She frustrates the designs of heresy,
How she extinguishes the fire that flames
From the far French unto the Indian soil!
What matter, then, if proud Napoleon,
With his infernal hosts the world appalling,
Seeks to possess the land of Mexico?
To arms, countrymen: war, war!
For the sacred palladium of Guadalupe
Protects our native land.
The deity of peace have painters skilled
Portrayed with bounteous grace and elegance,
Painting a virgin who with fair white hands
An offering of tender blossoms bore.
Thus were their pencils' finest excellences
A promise and foreshadowing of this,
The image of Our Lady, which in heaven
Received its colors. Thus beheld it he,
The fortunate Indian, at Tepeyac,
That bare and desolate hill, a miracle,
That unto day has been perpetuate.
Now while the world's ablaze with lively war,
Seems that affrighted peace has taken refuge
Within the happy households of our land.
How sadly, how oddly, sounds in modern ears this felicitation of a poet that peace, which has left the greater part of the world, has taken refuge in Mexico! Evidently our Fray Navarrete did not foresee the results of the war begun by the clerical revolutionist Hidalgo. But whatever may have been the political bias of this religious writer, he retains the esteem of his countrymen as one of the fathers of their fragmentary literature.