DEATH OF MONTEZUMA.

One sad, sad task, awaits my faltering pen,

And I have done. One flower upon his grave,

Who in his dying could, alas! not save

His country from the vulturous maw of men.

They played upon the monarch with their arts,

Till he became a captive in their hands;

It was consistent with their Christian hearts

That their good host should follow their commands.

They said their Christian lord across the sea

Must have his treasure for their Christian use.

All this was bitter, yet, he did agree,

And bent a patient knee to their abuse.

They struck their temples, and the red, right hand

Of Aztlan rose upon them. They could bear

To see their monarch littled, and their land

Made tribute to a stranger; but, beware

Stern warriors of Castile! touch not their gods.

The hearts of Aztlan are but human hearts,

And at some shrine the whole creation nods;

Invade the sanctum, and the whole man starts.

Las Casas would have won them with his love —

The potent key that opens every gate.

Let not deceit claim sanction from above;

It may assist upon the wheels of fate,

But what Spain offered through such legatees

Was worse than powder on the bated flame.

To gather fruit from such ill-freighted trees,

Was worse than stealing nightmare from a dream.

In Christ's good name they stole the monarch's gold;

They changed the name of Christ to treachery;

They gathered all the spoils their hands could hold,

And pointed to their Master on the tree.

Their Master? No! since Lucifer was hurled

Down from the shining chambers of the just

To vent his spleen upon a new-made world,

He never had a worthier task in trust,

Than that he gave to Spain's inglorious knights,

To rob this people of their vested rights.

The people gather at the palace gates,

And vengeance writes itself upon each face;

Their generosity no longer waits,

They spit upon, and spurn the outraged place.

It harbors those who wrote themselves as knaves

Upon the pliant tablets of their lives,

And now the incensed nation only craves

Deliverance for their children and their wives.

They know the belching cannon of the knights

Will make sad havoc in their stately host;

They know that Spain and Fate to-day unite;

They know, if fortune fails them, all is lost;

But they can bear no longer to be torn,

And swear by all the gods to pluck this thorn.

The Spaniards see their perfidy, too late;

And call great Montezuma to the gate.

“Why are my people here to-day in arms?

These stranger friends are still my welcome guests;

They soon will turn them backward to their homes.

Shall we raise hands against great Quetzalcoatl?

We fight against the gods? Lay down your arms!

Go to your homes, and all shall yet be well,

And peace shall reign in all Tenochtitlan !”

They bent before him reverently at first.

It was a moment — then their anger burst:

“Base Aztec! woman! coward! sneaking slave!

The whites have made a puppet of your name!

Talk not of fighting‘ gainst our honored gods;

We soil their sacred robes if we submit!”

A cloud of stones and arrows flew the air;

And Montezuma fell a victim of their rage and his despair.

His heart had broke when he beheld the throng,

For he was burning with his country's wrong;

And when the missiles smote his fevered crest,

His very soul was reaching out for rest.

They only helped to roll the burden off,

So long imprinted on his saddened face —

It was too much to hear his people scoff —

He fell; and they removed him from the place.

He never rose again, nor wished to rise;

He made no effort to outlive his land;

He felt his weakness, and he heard her cries;

He saw her sinking with his wasting sand.

He knew his enemies had stole the garb

Of gods to fasten on him their deceit;

That they had stung the nation with their barb,

And he would not survive its sore defeat.

He felt their scoffings were deserved of him,

For he should gathered wisdom with his years;

He saw his weakness when his sight was dim,

And poured his wasting moments out in tears.

They called the Priest to shrive him for his death —

The worthy Monk Olmedo takes his palms;

It is in vain; his very latest breath

Repulses all their uninvited alms.

He dies an Aztec — honor to his name!

And spurns the symbols that have crushed him down.

What mockery when he is all aflame

With their abuses! Give him back his crown,

His country's honor, and its hard-earned gold.

But force no wormwood to his fevered lips;

His hand is pulseless, and will soon be cold;

His life was shadow; and his death — eclipse.

Great are the consolations of the cross —

The Father-Son of Calvary, and time.

Their glory compensates a kingdom's loss;

But piety must not be wed to crime.

Did all the roses blossom from the cross,

And all the thorns grow out upon the waste?

Then were the metal guarded from the dross,

And every crust be suited to our taste;

But bitter-sweet is all the book of life,

And thorns and roses crowd the tangled way;

And good and evil, always, are at strife —

Night always dogs the footsteps of the day.

Yet “figs cannot be gathered from the thorn,”

Nor “grapes from thistles,” says the patient Lord —

One great, good life, like a new angel born,

Is the most potent sermon ever heard.

The hands that smote the Monarch in the face

Did honor to his ashes, cold and dead.

Their anger was rubbed out, and not a trace

Was left, as with their slow and measured tread

They bore his sacred ashes to the tomb

Within the walls of old Chapultepec,

Where stately trees, and flowers perennial bloom,

And, all the pulses of their lives in check,

Bow down to kiss the shrine of memory.

The sacred hush of death comes none too oft

To still the fevered brain and make us free —

It is a gentle hand, and moves so soft

That it compensates all our misery

By chaining all the lions of our life

And placing durance on the throbbing drum

That marshals us to earth's unpitying strife.

How should we reverence the hand that strikes our passions dumb!

Cortez and Montezuma; Aztlan, Spain —

The very mingling of these words is pain.

The one, bold, cold, unscrupulous and brave,

And making of each obstacle a slave;

Seeking his glory in the name of Christ,

To gain his ends unfaithful to each tryst.—

The fault is with the ethics of his race,

Which justify the means for any end,

And leave the moral aspect without place,

And to the foulest acts their ready sanction lend.

The thought of holding man to his account,

And throwing merit against circumstance,

Of cleansing souls at one great common fount,

Of holding out to man an equal chance —

These things were not considered in the least.

The glory of himself and Spain were first;

All the excesses pardoned by the Priest

Weaned the poor soul from any moral thirst.

A golden apple trembled on the limb,

And he must pluck it, at whatever cost.

What matter whose?— it should belong to him;

It was too tempting, and must not be lost:

The wall that lay before it must be scaled,

The owner of the field must be destroyed,

And if his prowess, in the effort failed,

Deceit and treachery must be employed.

The unbridled passions of the human soul

Linked with the crucifix in his emprise.

The lion, loosened and in full control —

The semblance of the Lamb to Aztlan's eyes:

A faithful offspring of the Papish loins,

The features of the Church in duplicate,

Though baser metals pass for golden coins,

Only earth's charity can make brave Cortez great.

But Montezuma conquers all our thought —

Tenochtitlan and old Chapultepec.

No greener shrine for memory can be sought;

The heart and conscience both alike bedeck

The unfading spectre of a soul sincere,

Who tugged at destiny against the dark —

The hand, unconscious, drops its laurels here.

His brown hands could not helm the fateful bark

Against the baleful breakers of old Spain;

Yet, who is proof against the foils of men.

His life is but a psalmody of pain.

What soul unmoved can touch it with the pen?

The link that bound the old world with the new,

With pure and patient hands, might been upturned,

And every missing chapter brought to view

By Clio gathered, and again inurned

In history's cloister; Egypt and Aztlan

Strike palms upon the bridges of the years;

But Spain denies the privilege to man,

And fills the vacuum with a nation's tears.

O Monarch of the fading, mighty past!

Great Montezuma! we are wed to thee.

Back of thy name the ocean is so vast

That we can only write — Eternity,

And leave the secret in thy broken breast.

We would that we could taken thy warm palm,

Held out in welcome from the mellow West,

And poured upon thy stricken life the balm

Of real enlightenment; and point thee back,

Over the ridges of the years, to God;

To where your people lost the beaten track,

And ever afterward were left to plod.

Those great sad eyes, once filled with light from Heaven,

Would shone like diamonds when they found the way,

And every fibre of thy nature striven

To turn thy nation's darkness into day.

Alas!‘ tis vain! we beat the empty air.

Our tears are mingled with thy wasting breath;

We all are torn with thy warm heart's despair,

And mourn with Aztlan at thy fateful death.