ARRIVAL OF THE SPANIARDS AT MEXICO.

November comes as Autumn's requiem,

To sigh and sough the harvest, and the field,

The winged ecstatics mourn, and then are dumb,

And life and growth in full submission yield.

Mexitli is not altogether clad

In nature's winding sheet of yellow leaves;

And yet her year is getting old and sad,

And youth and fruitage at his bedside grieves.

As on the lingering footsteps of the year —

A stranger and the Winter, hand in hand,

Both on the threshold as two ghosts appear.

One strikes the orbit with its wasting sand,

The other coils around the nation's throat;

The nation and the year together die;

Both on the waste of time are set afloat,

And sound alike death's mighty mystery.

In all the glitter at his vast command,

Went Montezuma to receive his guests;

If gold be great, then was it truly grand.

The royal plume upon his forehead rests;

His feet pressed soles of heavy beaten gold;

His cloak and anklets sprinkled o'er with pearls,

And only noble hands are left to hold

The blazing palanquin. Like titled Earls,

They guard the skirts of royalty from stain

Against the common people; all the same

As in our ripened age.‘ Tis hard to gain

Much on the sodden march of royalty,

Where accident supplants all other claim.

The monarch in the easy prime of life,

But lightly bronzed. The glowing, mellow hue

That lit his cheek, seemed borrowed from the sun,

And shadowing a heart that beat as true

To God and country as he knew their names,—

As any monarch that e'er wore a crown.

His open-hearted welcome, like himself,

Was, as the hardy yeoman, bare and brown.

He felt that he was meeting destiny,

Yet, to its solving, he would bend the knee

With dignity and grace; not turn away,

But face it with a ready, cheerful glance,

And meeting night, surcharge it with the day;

And grasping, break, if possible, the lance

That he felt sure was leveled at his breast.

He did not know the Inquisition stood,

With rack and torture at his very gate;

That it had traveled half the world for blood

To whet its throat for St. Bartholomew

And came with ravening appetite for him.

Those wary messengers he little knew,

Or those brown eyes would suddenly grown dim,

And the warm heart would furnaced up its heat;

And he would grappled at its very throat;

And man to man, and blood to blood, would meet,

And not a plume above one corselet float

To bear the story back of it to Spain.

They were not schooled in all the arts of war,

Nor were they wise in all the world's deceit;

Yet would they fought beneath their fated star,

And challenged every stubborn step, though it had proven vain.

But in this fleecy covering, the wolf

So hid its teeth that it was at the door

Before they dreamed of treachery. The gulf

Lay many leagues behind their foes; its shore

And all the distance had been gained by stealth.

Tlascala had been humbled on the march,

And promised spoils from Montezuma's wealth;

But they had reached the keystone of the arch,

At superstition's beck. The Aztec's gods

Had chained their valor, or their greater odds

Would crushed the viper, as it should have been,

And left it to a purer age, to seek a common kin.

The Monarch gave them hostelry and cheer,

Food of the rarest and the sparkling pulque,

And quarters for their troopers, all quite near

To his own palace gates. The very bulk

Of his well-laden markets was thrown down

To their repletion, for their loaded board.

They fared as princes favored of the crown,

Of all the best the Kingdom could afford.

The fair Malinche was interpreter,

And Montezuma spoke to them through her.

He told them of the mighty Quetzalcoatl,

And how he recognized them as his kin;

He thought he had their history, the whole

Vast riddle of their ancient origin.

“I rule a mighty nation,” quoth the King.

“All Anahuac is subject to my sway;

And yet, I recognize that you have come

From the strong palace of a mightier lord,

To whom I bend as subject; and with you

We now will sway the scepter of his will.

We long have watched his coming from the East,

And now that he has sent his messengers,

Our hearts are ready for his wise commands.

We would have urged your coming on before,

But that we heard of tales of cruelty,

Which, haply we may now believe as false,

We welcome you with all our open hearts,

“And hope you may enjoy our humble fare.

We are not wise, as you are, for our lives

Have not caught wisdom from the fountain head,

And hung upon the lips of Quetzalcoatl;

Yet are we cousins in the faded past,

And welcome you as brothers and as friends.”

How caught the Spanish Chieftain at the words!

How did he gloat upon this artifice!

How useless hung their heavy-hilted swords

That they should win a nation at this price!

With what a care he turned the dusty past,

To cover up the semblance of disguise;

And fix their superstition still more fast,

That he might clutch and carry home the prize.

“There is grandeur in the tented field;

The bivouac and the smoldering camp-fires.”

The human soul unconsciously must yield

To its supremest charm, where man aspires

To meet his fellow-man at one great bar;

And “valor speaks to valor” of its claim,

In all the panoply of stubborn war,

And drops the gauntlet in a nation's name.

It may be terrible, but it is grand

To see the banners flaunting in the breeze;

To hear the bugle blare and stern command;

And see opposing forces strive to seize

From Nature's stern arbitrament of force

The laurel that shall deck the victor's brow;

And turn the stream of nations from its course.

The cutting of new sod by such a plow

May tear up all the tender ties of life;

And hearts be turned to ashes in its path;

These are the ponderous incidents of strife,

And made legitimate when wrath meets wrath;

But when the assassin creeps into our hearts,

And draws around him all their sanctities,

And he becomes a parcel of our parts,

And all we have or claim are made as his,

What human brush can paint the upraised hand

That smites our confidence at such an hour?

What simile can human tongue command?

It is, indeed, beyond our mortal power.

We talk of devil, but the word is tame;

It cannot reach the climax we have sought;

It only frets us into hotter flame,

And beggars all the litany of thought.

I do not claim that Cortez was not brave;

Nor would I tear one laurel from his brow.

I only claim he stole the devil's glaive;

He held it then, and let him hold it now.

The issues of their lives are both with God,

The brown-eyed Monarch and the dark-eyed Knight.

The flowers of charity should strew the sod

Above them both; yet, Cosmos! was it right?

O world of human hearts and human lives!

Was Montezuma worthy of this fate?

O world of husbands! world of tender wives!

Behold your Aztlan! bleeding, desolate,

And say, if all their multiple of sins,

Though they be blacker than the blackest night,

Were worthy of the end that now begins

To grind them down to powder? Was it right

For Spain to steal the scepter from the hand

That held it out in welcome to their doors,

And poured their treasures out as free as sand,

And oped with lavish all their loaded stores;

To steal the key of superstition's gate,

And break the lock upon their hard-earned gold,

And, fattening at their table, steal their plate,

And feasting on their lambs to steal their fold;

To make a prison of the room he gave

In which to hold the Monarch as a slave?

O pitying God! thy thunderbolts were scarce.

Why crushed they not this hell-begotten farce?

And when the Aztecs, goaded to the quick

By the proud insolence of such a horde,

Could bear no longer parley, but were sick

Of such a visitor at such a board,

And rose en masse to crush the viper's fang,

They bring the Monarch out to face the crowd,

And plead for their immunity; the pang

That wrung his breast ( for he, indeed, was proud )

Was like an arrow in his royal heart;

And yet he prayed for their forgiveness then,

And like a martyr bravely bore their part —

Search history; and find out greater men,

And they are less forgiving. There he stood,

His nation thronged before him, in its wrath;

Yet did he plead, before this multitude,

To spare the serpent, now across their path;

He could not name a promise not unbroke,

He could not offer one excuse for time,

He could not tell them why to hold their stroke,

He plead for hands scarred over with their crime.

Did ever charity reach loftier height?

Can Christian Spain outshine this sad, brown face?

How many souls in Christiandom, as white,

Would faced his countrymen, from such a place?

Great Montezuma! where shall we find room!

When Spain has such a multitude of saints

To save your enemies, you courted doom,

Yet would not kiss the cross with your complaints;

Therefore, anathema!— It will not do,

To pass a heretic at Heaven's gate;

You held no mumbled crucifix to view —

The Infallible has said it, you must wait.

Wait for a riper age to touch the chord

That quivers, all unconsciously, your praise;

When justice, only, draws the tardy sword,

And Earth's abhorrence covers those old days

With its repentant ashes, then my King

May rest his memory upon stubborn facts

Nor minstrels falter when they fain would sing

Their elegies implanted with his acts.

The Holy Inquisition, from old Spain,

And St. Bartholomew, from “Ma belle France,”

The hissing fagots of sweet Mary's reign —

These million martyrs, with their melting glance,

Look at his agony, across the sea,

Who, blind in superstition, groped his way

O'er harmless victims and much misery

To where the rays were slanting into day.

In Europe's face the star of Bethlehem,

With its benignant splendor, shed its light;

These but the groping nomads of old Shem,

Lost in the meshes, of a rayless night.

Those, neath the palm of Earth's philosophy;

These on the torchless desert, not a star

To guide them through life's potent mystery;

Those bringing all the wisdom from afar,

Though Montezuma's sins had cried to Heaven

In a far greater stress; yet what were they,

Paling his cruelties, and still forgiven,

To pour out greater vials the next day?

O Spain! you lent the sanction of your name,

To cover up the foulest deed of time;

Upon your skirt is fastened this great shame,

And nation never wore the brand of a more causeless crime.