ANAHUAC.

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 : 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 Caesar: 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 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!