THE EMPIRE OF MONTEZUMA.

The Star looked down at the Mountain;

And the Mountain looked down at the Sea;

And there was no malice in either one's breast,

Each was called by the Deity

To fill its place in the region of space

Of the fathomless Yet-to-be.

The Star did n't fall on the Mountain,

Nor the Mountain smite the sea;

But each gave cheer in the other's ear,

And they dwelt in harmony.

Why did n't the Mountain say to the Star:

“Begone, with your impudent stare!”

Or the Sea to the Mountain: “How dare you intrude,

You presumptuous imp of the air?”

Why did n't they? they were not human;

They could n't talk, as we talk;

They were not born of a woman;

They never had learned to walk.

They had learned the language of patience;

They had learned to bear, and be dumb;

They had learned to hold, through heat and cold,

Their load, till the Master should come.

O infinite language of silence!

O eloquent, voiceless speech!

Help us to bear the ills that are,

And fetter us each to each,

Till all our envy goes out with the Sea,

And our malice goes out with the star,

And we silently bear what is to be —

Like the Mountain — gazing afar

To the infinite depths of an endless world,

Where eternity spreads its zone,

Where planets, countless as grains of sand,

Gaze out on the “great white throne.”

The pale-faced prophet Quetzalcoatl

Had gone to the rising sun;

In his wizard boat he was seen to float,

To where the day was begun,

Without a sail on the wings of the gale,

For the land of Tlappalan

He waved back his followers from the sea,

Saying he would certainly come again,

In the golden future, yet to be,

And the gods should dwell on the earth as men.

They had made him a god, because he was good —

Not always the case in the mystic love —

They had carved his image in stone and wood,

And his shrines were built on the pyramid's floor.

They called him the god of the earth and air,

And his legends were many, and often told;

And the priests, with sacrifice and prayer,

Reaped a heavy harvest of fruit and gold.

And oft were their faces turned to the East,

To claim his promise, who was to come;

And they watched the surge of the gulf's green yeast,

And yet the years had continued dumb.

Nezahualcoyotl sleeps with his fathers,

And his son now reigns in his stead;

His goodness succeeds to the living,

But his wisdom goes out with the dead,

For both in the Lord of Tezcuco

Had been richly and happily wed.

Two nations, strike hands o'er the waters,

Tezcuco and Aztlan are one,

By the league that their fathers had plighted,

Since they entered this land of the sun.

So, the King of their neighbor, Tezcuco,

Has come to the Aztec Court,

To assist them in crowning the Monarch,

A Prince of much goodly report.

He is found on the steps of the temple;

He has served, both as warrior and Priest;

He has brought many victims to slaughter —

The realm has been greatly increased

By the sturdy sway of his conquering arm.

And now, he is called to reign,

The last of his race, to fill the place,

Whose honor shall prove but a life-long pain.

Montezuma was young, but his sword was old,

And the war-god was glutted with victims and gold.

A pledge of his prowess: a promise to fate,

That the nation would prosper, the King prove great.

Some men are great in sorrow — there be tears

That crystalize to diamonds at the last.

They need the weight of carbonizing years;

Yet, how they glitter after these have past!

Life needs the tempering at such a forge,

Or it would brittle at the lightest touch;

But when the burden is but one vast gorge,

The weary soul must cry, “It is too much.”

Nezahualpilli places the crown on his head,

And the victims bleed, and the altars burn;

The words of admonishment all are said,

And the buoyant crowd to their homes return.

“The King is dead!” “Long live the King!”

“Hail!” and “farewell!” how closely tread

The steps of the living upon the dead!

How are both touched with a single spring!

Nezahualpilli soon passes away,

And the rival King, he so lately crowned,

Divides his Kingdom, and makes a prey,

A figment, with empire's empty sound.

And Montezuma outleaps the King;

But is lord of an empire reaching the sea;

And many nations their tribute bring,

And some of the weak to the southward flee,

To pass the reach of his powerful arm,

And lift new prodigies to the sky,

To meet Earth's sunshine, shadow, and storm,

To finish the race, to falter and die.

He gathers his treasures from myriad mines.

The cotton and aloe are wove into cloth.

The banana and maize and wild forest vines,

While they load to repletion, are proof against sloth.

His palace is burnished with every hue

Of the rainbow tints of his fabulous land,

Where Nature entravails on every hand

To bring new beauties of life to view.

There are drapes of feather-cloth deftly made,

There were plumes and plushes of richest craft,

There were broidered robes where the colors played,

Like the hands that made them, dainty and daft.

His harem equaled his Ottoman peer,

There was beauty of every hue and mold —

The shy and the gay, the demure and bold —

That his provinces furnished from far and near.

As fine a collection of beauty and grace,

Of the flashing eye and the beaming face,

As is seen on the gates of the Euxine sea

At the present day, where the “powers that be,”

With the Union Jack floating above the rest,

Secures to that ill-omened bird its nest.

Their Teocallas rose on every hand,

And half a hundred gods their worship claim;

Their priestcraft is a strong and haughty band;

Their Beckets and their Woolseys are the same

As those that cling upon the neck of time

Through all the feudal ages; we may choose

The leeches of the Christian Church as best —

They sucked the blood the State could not refuse,

And so did these bedizzened, of the West.

These led their victims to the altars black,

Those wasted theirs by torturing and pain,

The fatal “itztli,” gave the parting shock

To Aztec's victims; but a blacker stain

Rests on thy skirts, thou bloody-mantled Spain!

Thou the avenger of a human wrong?

As well might Lucifer enrobe as saint,

An earthquake key the carol of a song,

Or old Caligula bring a complaint!

“They slew their thousands!” yes; and what did'st thou?

Thy thousands in the shadow of the cross;

They took not on their perjured lips thy vow;

Thy gold they did not mingle with their dross.

Through all the dark of ages did they grope;

Through all the light of empire did'st thou graze;

They pinioned superstition to their hope;

The monody of hell was mingled with thy praise.

Go back! and scour the oxyd from the gem

Thy lips have turned to ebony, and paint

Humiliation on thy doorsteps. Stem!

Stem the black pool of Styx! and find a saint

Whose blood shall gain forgiveness for thy past;

But count no beads upon the path of time —

Earth's execration is too justly cast —

Thy very name, a synonym of crime!

They had their courts where justice was dispensed

With what would shame the Janus-faced machine

We call our jurisprudence. They commenced

What Christian polity was left to glean,

To her advantage in the after time.

We write “anathema” above the gates

Of what we choose to call “barbaric clime;”

And yet, the blinded goddess often waits

To gather wisdom at her bare, black feet

Which, bruised and blistered, tread the narrow way

To where the graces uninspired meet

And superstition's night breaks into day.

They held the bond of family and home

As firmly as more favored nations hold;

Their homes were castles, where no man could come

Without the potent ses-a-me of gold.

The wealthy pluralized the name of wife

( As many Bible patriarchs once did ),

Their virtue was the average of life —

There were excrescences not easy hid.

Yet woman was more near her half of earth

Than she had reached in most of Christendom.

She held her value and could claim her worth;

Not bartered with the readiness of some

Self-styled enlightened. Much is to be learned

In corners of the earth that we call “dark,”

Where jewels are for centuries inurned

That torches of enlightenment may tarnish with a spark.

We lay rude hands on temples not our own,

Nor little heed the human souls enshrined;

The sacred crevice of each hard-marked stone

But coldly cover with the virdict, “blind.”

God help us, that we point a hand more pure,

And raise the casement with a grander trust;

The hands that lift it must indeed be clean,

Or comes the humbling challenge, “Is it just?”

One “great white throne” shall judge us, one and all;

One great white Hand shall hold the scales of fate,

Or clothed in light, or covered with a pall,

We tread the way through one eternal gate.

God grant the temples we so rudely spoil,

May not accuse us when we stand alone!

But hearts are human things, and they do coil

The infinite in blindness. Not a groan

Escapes the index of the Father Son.

A child in blindness still is but a child,

And held with greater yearning to be won.

Our cold, hard hands cannot be reconciled

To one warm Heart that throbs for all mankind,

And covers, with a common love, the race;

And leads, with greater tenderness, the blind,

That they more closely feel His clasp, who cannot see His face.

The arts of husbandry were well advanced:

They sowed and reaped unstinted from the soil;

The sun, with ripening fervor, on them glanced,

And gave them back, a hundred fold, their toil.

They had not lost their ancient faith in him,

Though other gods their scattered homage claim

His breast was their Elysian; never dim

The ancient hope that hung upon his name.

Their maize and maguey shone upon the plain,

Their chocolate gave nourishment and zest,

The corn gave recompense for sugar-cane,

Their banquets were provided with the best;

Fish from the ocean, fruits from every clime,

So diverse, yet within such easy reach;

The tropics and the temperates enchime

With all their plumaged babblings of speech;

And they interpreted the varied whims

That Nature holds embryoed in her breast.

They climbed the boughs and shook her heaviest limbs,

Too burdened for the garner to be missed.

This ancient mother never yet has failed

Her children in their earnest search for food;

She may be panoplied and heavy mailed,

Yet does her larder furnish all when fully understood.

Take all in all, and measure by the test —

The stern, hard test of history — and we find

That Aztlan, very far from being best,

Still was a prodigy. That she was blind

In her religious ethics, none deny;

That she had faults, no champion gainsays;

She lifted bloody hands against the sky;

She filled the avenging measure of her days.

But God is God, and man is always man;

And earthly judgment is at best a snare.

And never, since the human race began,

Has turned to Heaven more piteous despair

Than her sad eyes, burnt out with agony;

Moaning above her nation, and her name,

The bitter monody of “Not to be,”

The deep humiliation, and the shame

That sent her crouching at the foot of Spain;

( The fairest daughter of the wilderness )

Without a hand to solace in her pain,

Or ray of hope to lighten her distress.

Could she been gently led, and tenderly,

To higher life and holier resolve,

Had charity bent forth her noble sway,

The Christian graces that with Earth revolve

Without the wasting friction, paid their suit

To win her back to wakefulness from sin —

How would she compensate the victor's hand,

And kiss the rod that smote with its regard!

But to be “drawn and quartered” like the brute,

And made the sport of passion; to begin

A life of vassalage, with such a slave

Yclept as master, claiming from above

The license that Jehovah never gave

Except the iron hand was woven o'er with love —

It is too much! God's justice is not lame.

Hypocrisy may steal and wear the cloak,

And don the ermine, with its fair, false claim;

With crucifix and litany may croak;

But Time o'ertakes it and it falls to earth

Like Judas on its immolating sword,

And it must learn to curse its hour of birth.

It is the pledge of destiny — the stern, unwritten word.