Montezuma Part 7

No wonder, that when Wabun pa.s.sed away, Their torpid natures should have lost the charm That held so perfect, with its gentle sway, Yet slacked so quickly, with the palsied arm.

Infirmities are easy to impart, And through the generations, they come down; But G.o.d must place his hand upon each heart, And press each brow where he would drop a crown.

Long brotherhood of forest, storm and flood, Had schooled them for the turbulence of life.

The wraith of Nature made them men of blood; The war of elements, the ocean's strife, The thunder of Niagara now heard, The lashing of Atlantic on the beach, The slogan of the forest--in a word The carnival, at rife, within their reach, All served to spur their natures into storm.

How many catch the key-note of their song From the surrounding elements, and warm Their frozen energies, and make them strong In earth's unceasing alchemy! Much more The untutored savage; he has lost the key, And must from Nature's chalice find the door, Through which to penetrate life's mystery.

And many generations pa.s.sed away, Since these stern foresters had dwelt apart From their ancestral brethren; till the day When in their higher prowess, from the heart Of the great forest fastnesses, they spring As panthers, on their unsuspecting prey.

They have grown strong in weaponry, yet cling To Deity, in their untutored way.

The "happy hunting ground" to them is Heaven; And the "Great Spirit" still to them is G.o.d; Yet, from their hearts, all tender pa.s.sions driven, They smite their brethren with a heavy rod.

A long and ceaseless struggle, many years, Alternately, invasion and defense, Till they are driven southward; and the fears, That Kohen's prophecy would be fullfilled And back of this, the agony intense Of impotence in prayer so deeply chilled The hearts of these poor children of the sun, That they gave easy conquest to their foes; And thus the struggle stubbornly begun, So unresisting now, was finished without blows.

When man is shorn of strength, and there is left Only Omnipotence, we kiss the rod-- The very rod that smites us. In the cleft We would attempt to hide from Deity, Yet in his anger is an answered prayer-- The consciousness of presence; though we flee, The wrath of love, is proof of constant care.

But when we beat against the empty air, And every echo sends us back despair, And even superst.i.tion, fails to foil Our souls with the deceptive glow of spoil, Then are we bittered, and our path made black; We grope in mists, Cimmerian, on the wrack Of constant and interminable doubt, A natural prey, and easy put to rout.

To South, and West, they turn their fateful way Beyond the Mississippi; and their day Seemed lighted with a new influx of hope.

The sun embraced them with a warmer smile; The mellow fragrance of the Southern slope Added entrancement each succeeding mile.

Not all at once the exodus took place, For they were many, and had scattered wide; Yet to the southward all had set their face To seek in other fields a place to hide From cruel persecutions. When our kin Lends its consanguined arder to the dart, How more intent, with vengeful purposes, How heavier is the load upon the heart!

They scatter into fragmentary clans, And in the earnest of their added woe, Give birth to new religious phantasies.

The unclogged streams of superst.i.tion flow, When down the mountains, and across the moors, The heavy, swollen torrents sweep along, Throwing their scattered wrecks upon the sh.o.r.es, And breaking barriers, however strong.

Baal was great, when Baalbec reared her crest And column after column gave her grace And all the East upon her beauty smiled; But when the "owls and bats" usurped her place, The G.o.d had fallen. In the temple dust, Where man, with his immortal, had so strove To make the marble animate (in vain, Like other myriad phantoms of the brain) Time fashions into ghostly hands, that sternly point above.

And so, G.o.d reaps involuntary praise, From every fashioning of man's design; His ways, indeed, cannot be called our ways; Yet his hozannas, from each crumbling shrine, Teach us the servitude of all the past; That human hands but fashion Heavenly aids; That every sculptured mythmark only fades Into eternal sunshine, at the last.

Some crossed the mountain ramparts of the West; Some lingered still upon the Eastern slope; The empire yet was open to their zest, And all were buoyant with a new-born hope.

But war, like pestilence, doth warp our lives, And like contagion, it infects the air.

Peace comes in measure, but it never thrives Directly after conflict, till grows fair The flesh so lately scarred. Intestine war Made ravage of their ranks; they ill could spare Their bravest, yet the first to fall in fratricidal jar.

The lines, by conflict, soon were closely drawn, And from the night of struggle nations dawn, Whose chiefs a.s.sume the King's prerogative.

Clans fall, and clansmen perish; nations live That pa.s.s chaotic conflict, and ensphere Their crude material, as a new-born world, To individual phalanxes, and rear Their rude escutcheon. As in ether whirled, The new born planet tracks its trial course; So must this human query find its way, And failure is its fashion; but still worse Are those who fail to grapple with the day, But look supinely on while vested rights Are trampled under foot, and raise no hand In deprecating gesture; from the heights Of grim impartial history will stand Unfading letters, written to the shame Of those whose scourges fail to make a name.

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 pa.s.sions, 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 G.o.ds arose; The selfish pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sions 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.blest 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 sh.o.r.e.

The hungry arms that reach out after G.o.d, 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.

G.o.d 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.

THE TOLTECS JOURNEY SOUTH.

The Toltecs were the first to break the way Toward the vertex of the Summer sun; To catch the fervor of his ripest ray, And talismise the pilgrimage begun.

And after many days their fasting eyes Are feasted with Mexitli's[A] lovely plain-- So like a newly-fashioned paradise, An almost Eden, sprung to life again.

Her placid lakes gave back her deep blue sky In rivalry of Nature--Nature's charms Do cast reflected multiples, and try To fold us in with her unnumbered arms.

Not all we see, but all we feel, invites, Together with our seeing, to secure An unrestricted homage; all unite In this uncovered world, so rich and pure And lade with sunshine, ripened into form, Concentered rays to leaves and blossoms grown, The larch impendent with its verdant cone, The oak's historic battlement of storm, The cypress mourning and exultant palms, The provident maguey, whose offered alms Found ready acceptation at their hands, The maize, which they had known in northern lands, Were native to her rich and virgin soil And gave the husbandman unstinted spoil.

And thus, with Nature and themselves at rest, Fresh inspiration from the G.o.d of peace Expands and energizes every breast, And fettered manhood labors for release.

Invention is emanc.i.p.ation: Time Doth loosen Nature's fetters; man invents Not one of those discoveries sublime That couples his poor name with consequence.

The world had moved a million years or so Ere Galileo blundered into prison For telling how we are compelled to go.

The fog of superst.i.tion had not risen; And he whose brain peered up above the cloud, To widen the horizon of his thought, Must be content to leave the gnarlish crowd Of puppets and of priestcraft who have fought The van of progress, immemorial time, In fear some newly loosened truth might break Some preconcerted dogma, deeming crime The impulsive movement of the soul to slake The thirst that G.o.d implanted there, to burn Its way into the hidden and unseen, And find new thoroughfares for its return, And on creation's outer verge new ent.i.ties to glean.

So did these primal pioneers look out Beyond the compa.s.s of their husbandry, And challenge their surroundings; manly, stout, And earnest did they seek the mystic tree Of knowledge in this Eden of the West, Not interdicted by Divine decree, But always open to the manly quest And the unflagging purpose to be free.

The zodiac gave up its lettered scroll To their inquiries; and the measured year Unsealed the clasp that held it from control, And truths that had seemed very far, revealed themselves quite near.

Their rudely fashioned lodges soon gave way To buildings of a more pretentious form; The forests and the quarries and the clay Were forced to human va.s.salage. The charm That held the forest templary from spoil Was not entirely broken; after years And Christian conquest must consume the toil And travail of the centuries. Our tears, Are but a poor atonement for the brand Our westward march has made on Nature's back.

We mourn our forest fastnesses too late; With hand unbridled we have torn their face, And given legal sanction to their fate-- But what companionship can take their place?

Nearest to Nature's very heart of hearts, The verdant monarchs beckon us to G.o.d; Their benison with life alone departs; They testify of Eden from the sod.

O man! that thy perfection should be lost, When so much perfectness is left on earth!

How much of bitterness! With what a cost Didst thou forget the sacred touch that hallowed thee at birth!

The worship of Hurakin, "Heart of Heaven,"

Spoke of a healthier, higher growth of soul, The consciousness of sins to be forgiven; A G.o.d, whom weakness could at once control; A prophecy, of Fatherhood to come; A ray that pencils from the "great white throne;"

A voice to energies, that had been dumb For many centuries--prophetic groan Of man's insatiate thirst for betterment, Not all in vain. The white-winged dove of peace For many years was theirs; they came and went Beyond their borders, without let or lease; Found sunnier climes to South; and, as a charm Was laid upon their footsteps, they advance To hover closer to their ancient G.o.d.

They still were pliant to his fateful glance, And scanned his burnished surface to inquire His potency in human destiny.

They had forgot the legend of his fire, Yet, from his searching, steadfast eye, not one of them were free.

So pa.s.s they out from the historic ken-- Theirs, no aggressive way-mark on the earth.

We linger on their pa.s.sage, and the pen Would gladly pour regret upon the dearth Of the indentures they have left to mark Their peaceful, noiseless tread upon the sh.o.r.e; But it is vain; yet out of all this dark, One lesson may we glean: That evermore The souls that move with nature on her march Are those who drop, as she drops down her leaves; They fill the earth with fruitfulness, and arch The highway of the nations with their sheaves; They sleep to history, but wake to G.o.d; Theirs is the pa.s.s-key through eternal gates; They write no vengeful Sanscrit on the sod; They linger at no earthly court, but the recording seraph waits To write them blessed of the Lord, the jewels of the fates.

THE AZTECS--AZTLAN.

The silver current of the upper Grande, And where the Gila penetrates the East, The Zuni lines its rocky bed with sand, New ground from granite that has been released From mountain base. The vertebrate Madre Breaks into several center-stays of spine, Which form the watershed that feeds the sea, On either side the sunny slopes recline.

Where Coronado laid in after years The scepter of his Sovereign, and bespoke The unbroke silence, as the cycle nears The bending of the neck to Hispagniola's yoke.

Here was the fabled Aztlan; and the race, Whose ancestry had circled half the globe, Have now their latest destiny to face.

O! could they peer the darkness through, and probe The deep recesses of impending time!