PREHISTORIC RENDEZVOUS OF THE AZTECS.

On either side the crest of the Madre,

Where mountains kiss their hands to either sea,

One slope to blush upon the opening day,

The other, to drop down its tapestry

And hold the hand for promise of return,

Three nations, as three stars, to being burn.

The Toltecs, purest of the primal race,

The Chichamecs, devoted to the chase,

And Aztecs, strongest in the arts of war —

All, seeming thrown beneath one fateful star.

No painter limnes upon his labored scroll,

Be it fantastic, feast, or forest shades,

As war upon its victims; from the soul

( Plastic as new damped clay ) it never fades

Till Time has ironed out the furrowed past;

And Peace, by laying fevered brows to rest,

Over the present has its mantle cast;

Then Nature folds its wardling to its breast.

So on these nations had been writ, in brief,

The deep-burned liturgy of hardened strife,

And through the furnace of their pungent grief,

They learn to plant the rootlets of their life.

One thing is never lacking, at the time,

When in their nascent passions, nations rise:

The craft of Priests, in every age and clime,

To “point a moral,” or portend the skies.

And so, from cast-off altars to the sun,

New pleadings to new conjured gods arose;

The selfish passions since the world begun,

All seek supernal outlet on their foes.

One thing, not far from truth, grew into form:

The thought of one great, universal heart,

That beat against the window pane of thought,

And formed of all existences a part.

How near the passions of mankind will verge,

Sometimes, upon the borderland of bliss!

And all the race is bettered if they urge

Continuous march; nor turn their steps amiss;

A little light would lead them on to God,

And lacking, it the race for ages plod.

O that the infant eye of every race

Might recognize at once the Master's face!

All brought their tribute to Tonatiuh's shrine,

Still burnishing the sun with rays divine.

True worship strengthens in the wake of years;

Its song grows rhythmal with repeated chant;

Its beauty lingers, though it disappears;

Rekindle, and it melts the adamant.

But worship on a purely human base,

Though it may work its legends into song

And deify the noblest of its race,

Can never be unquestionably strong.

The happenings of Nature clog its wheels;

The elements brush down its cobweb foils;

And from its mimicry the heart appeals,

And heavenly souls are not for human toils.

It is impossible to still the brain

By merely human fiat at it thrust;

Man journeys out, and he returns again —

The Father's voice alone can call him from the dust.

And yet, each effort of the human soul,

To force existence for its latent wings,

Is of an energy that leaps control,

Whose germ from our immortal nature springs.

The very latch-key of the eternal realm,

Though touched in ignorance, commands the door.

A more than human wisdom guides the helm,

As we approach the palm-extending shore.

The hungry arms that reach out after God,

Are as the infants for the parent's breast;

The soul is weary of its fruitless plod,

And Nature beckons it to perfect rest.

What though the stream be poisoned, if its flow

Seeks only the great ocean to be lost;

Not long upon its bosom is it tossed,

Ere it recovers its old healthful glow.

The old-time sparkle of the mountain spring,

Gleams in the dew-drop that returns to earth.

No poison lurks within the second birth,

It ever carries healing on its wing.

Thus, howsoe'er the soul may find its way,

Over the wilderness to Jordan's plain,

It shall not fail of its eternal gain,

The night so trackless shall break into day.

The saint, whom angels ushered through the gate,

With paeans of rejoicing, once did grope

And lose his way, and loose his hold on hope —

No soul that reaches it is told to wait.

God waits upon the effort to reply,

And seeing human hands stretch out for aid,

His stronger palm is soon upon them laid —

Our weakness is the signet he cannot deny.