MONTEZUMA.

As mariner upon the rocky sea,

Without a compass, helm, or heavenly hope,

A part of Earth's great ancestry to be

Upon the plains of Shinar; and they grope

In nature's darkness; they have lost the way

That leadeth to the Father, and can find

No clue of that great Presence, once their stay,

And still as near; but sin doth make us blind,

And when it fastens on the soul, the Father fades away.

How wholly lost, when man cannot descry

One token of his Maker in the soul —

One step remains, the animal must die;

But death has superseded its control,

Since the immortal “Ego” is no more,

The spirit gone from its companion, dust —

The ashes are but animate in vain

When love, and light, have given place to lust

And conscience gives no puncture for its pain.

Thus were they gathered, in this day far gone,

So near the causeway of the almighty past,

That retrospect brings close, the thought of God —

We wonder that a cloud could overcast,

So primitive a people, that the Shepherd's voice

Should leave no lingering echo, for the ear, so tokened and so choice.

And they would build a city, and a tower

Whose top would reach the very verge of Heaven;—

The puniest arm, is puissent in power,

When to its grasp supernal aid is given;

But muscles may, like cordage, swell the arm,

And arteries, like rills of mountains flow.

Weak is the blood that breakers them to harm,—

The fires of passion but a moment glow.

They, as the infants play upon the rim

Of ancient Ocean, had been rocked to sleep

In the bare arms of Nature; she would trim

Her lamps for them, and patient vigil keep

Upon their slumbers; and Heaven, to them,

Was but a brilliant, close-spread canopy,

Or crystal dome, a sort of diadem

Just out of easy reach, and they could see

No reason why they might not build a tower

Would intercept it; and their foolish pride

Supposed this little caprice of the hour,

Through all the after age, would witness of their power.

They made them bricks, and steadily they reared

The spiral column heavenward; the Great Eye

Bent vigilantly on them, as they neared

The upper ether, silent as the sky

Draws round its garniture; into each soul

Crept the first rootlets of an unknown tongue;

Each household head placed under his control

The elements of intercourse, first flung

Together by the great Teacher; just before

When they had dropped from their exulting hands

The rough-made tools; they closed forevermore

Their mutual labor, though in other lands

They could resume their use, this was the last

Of the poor monument that they had reared —

The workmen stand in wonderment aghast,

Though they had wrought together, and had cheered

Each other in their task, each quivering lip

Breathed but confusion to the other's ears,

No more from common cup of thought they sip,

But forced to strangerhood for many, many years.

In what a school was fashioned our first thought.

How the poor soul is dumbed, and quivering,

When we conceive what the Great Master wrought.

How are we littled, what a nameless thing

“Is man, that thou art mindful” thus “of him.”

Thou settest up, and pullest down, and we —

Our hearts are hushed, our vision is made dim —

Mites in the balance of imponderate destiny.

A camp in Central India,‘ neath the palms,

And where the lap of nature is so full,

That all the world may beggar it of alms

And drink of its repletion; a mere tool

Of hungry Kingdoms, thirsty Dynasties —

The finger-tips of Alexander's arm —

The plethorite of the Augustan age —

The gilt that margins all the tapestries

Down through middle ages; and the charm

That lends a mellow fragrance to the page

Of her, the Island Queen, whose arm meets arm

In the embrace of earth, her borders refuge from avenging harm.

A journey into Egypt, with their flocks before,

And peaceful conquests back, an opening door

To vast historic truths, a Niobe

Moaning her children's travail in advance,

A restless nomad people, like the sea,

Stirred by involuntary force, whose billows dance

To music of the spheres, stern Autocrat, and yet a slave to its own mastery.