Poems (Cary)/The Maiden of Tlascala
THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.A ROMANCE OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF TEZCUCO.
White-limbed and quiet, by her nightly tombSat the young Day, new-risen; at her feet,Wrapt loose together, lay the burial clouds;And on her forehead, like the unsteady crownOf a late winged immortal, flamed the sun.All seasons have their beauty: drowsy Noon,Winking along the hilltops lazily;And fiery sandaled Eve, that bards of eld,Writing their sweet rhymes on the aloe leaves,[1]Paused reverently to worship, as she went,Like a worn gleaner, with a sheaf of cornPressed to her bosom, lessening, down the west;And thou, dusk huntress! through whose heavy locksShimmer the icy arrows of the stars—About whose solemn brow once blinded FaithWound the red shadows of the carnival,Till o'er its flower-crowned holocaust waxed pale The constellation of the Pleiades—[2]Fair art thou: but more fair the rising day! And day was fully up: Along the hills,Black with a wilderness of ebony,Walked the wild heron; and in Chalco's waveWaded the scarlet egret, while the Light,Flitting along the cloisters of the wood,Softly took up the rosaries of dew;From stealthy trailing on the hunter's pathThe ocelot drew back, and in her lairGrowled hungry, lapping with hot tongue her cubs;While the iguana, gray and rough with warts,Checkt round with streaky gold, and cloven tongued, Crept sluggish up the rocks—a poison beast:And the slim blue-necked snake of XalapaLifted its limber folds into the light.From his black cirque of rocks, stood up aloneThe monarch of the mountains;[3] his breast,The fiery foldings of his garment, brackedAnd seamed with ashes, and his gray head bare,The while, with crystals rough, Chinantla's pride,[3]Sat, chiefest of a shining brotherhood,His turquoise eyes fast shut 'neath mossy lids,Regardless of the clamorous sea that layTwining her wild green hair about his feet,Betwixt her heavy sobs, for love of him—Flat all her monstrous length along the sands.Joyous, the ranks of-cedars and of pinesShook their thick limbs together, as the windsToiled past them toward the red gaps of the hills,Through which the Morning came, and, where, for hoursTanning her cheeks with kisses, they would stay.But to the hopeless heaven itself were sad:The darkened senses fail to apprehendThe elements of beauty; the dull gazeIs introverted to the world within,Whose all is ruins—seeing never moreThe all-serene and blessed harmonyThat lives and breathes through Nature: to the airGiving its motion and its melody,The trees their separate colors, the wild brooksTheir silver syllables, 'gainst fruitless stones Joining bright grasses, knitting goldenlyThe clear white of the day's departing trainInto the blank, black border of the night,Dew raining on the dust, and on the heartThe comfortable influences of love.So; things which if left single, had been bad,Grow in affiliation, excellent. Mindless of all the beauty of the time,Prone on the wasting ruins of a shrineReared by the priests of Hometeuli,[4] longGone down in still processions to the dark,Lay fallen Hualco—his unmailèd armsProstrate along the dust, while, like live coals,His eyes, no longer shadowed by a crown,Deep in their blue and famine-sunken ringsBurned hungry for the life of Maxtala,[5]—In wrappings of the sunrise purples, grand,In awful desolation, glorious.Is not the eagle hovering toward the sunIn broken flutterings to keep its holdUp level with the mountains, more sublimeThan in the steady flight of stronger wings?Thus in his exile, thus in solitude,His manly port was nobler than a king's.Not his the vain and groveling lust of powerThat rounds the ambitious aims of selfishness: His broken people he would fain have builtInto a mighty column, that should stand,The beacon of the unborn centuries;From the blind statues where IdolatrySunk deep her bleeding forehead in the dust,He would have stript the wreaths voluminous,And on the altar of the living God,Laid them, a broidery for the robe of faith.As Thought went searching through his soul, his faceNow with the piteous pallor of despairWas overspread, and now was all transformedInto the stormy beauty of roused hate.Such change is seen when o'er some buried fireThe gust shoves heavy, and the quickened sparksBurn red together in the ashen ground.Fragments of temples, sacred to the ritesOf the departed Aztecs, round him lay,Lapsing to common dust; and, great and still,With snowy mantle blown along the clouds,Iztacihuatla[6] listened to the stars,And cast the terrible horoscope of storms.From its rough rim of rocks stretching away,Dark, to the unknown distance, lay the sea,Where that lost god[7] took refuge, whose black beard Heavy with kisses of the drowning waves,Back from his wizzard skiff of serpent skinsDragged, as he sailed for fabulous Tlapalan.A prince, and yet a dweller in the woodsSo long, that in his path the fiercest wolvesWalked tame as with their mates, and o'er his headHowled that strange beast[8] that to his fellows criesTill they devour the feast himself tastes not;And flying rats gnawed their repasts, hard by,From tawny barks of oily trees, or madeWith black and wrinkled wings the sunshine dusk!Cool in the shadows of the mountain palm,The white stag rested, fearless of his step,And the black alco, melancholy, dumb,Fixed his sad eyes upon him as he passed,And, sluggish, wallowing in his watery trough,His loose mane gray with brine, the amyztli,[9]Regardless of a kinglier presence, lay.But to Hualco it was all the sameWhether the music of the Awakener,Starting at twilight, rung along the woods,Or whether Silence, fed of dreams alone,Pressed the sweet echoes back to solitude:Whether the ebony and cherry treesSpread over him their cool and tent-like shade,And pillows of the ceiba down lay white Upon on his bed of moss, or whether hotAnd sharp against his face, its iron leavesThe mirapanda thrust: To husk the sheathesFrom the sweet fruitage of the plant of light,Or, starved, to climb the rugged steeps whereinThe shelves of unsunned stone were folded fullOf slimy lodgers, were to him as one. A bright bud, broken from a royal treeAnd planted-in the desert, how shall ISing his strange story fitly, and so makeA new moon in the sky of poesy?The bards of fair Tezcuco long agoWon from the mountains where he hid, forlorn,Treasures of beauty shining still alongThe dreary ways poetic pilgrims go,Like fountains roofed with rainbows—making allHis wrongs and toils, in cloudy exile borne,The brief eclipse of the most glorious dayThat ever shone along the Aztec hills. While in the broidery of a baby kingYet swathed, unconscious, all the lovely maidsFrom Actolan to Champala had come,And from their girdles loosening the pearlsAnd amethysts, had left them at his feet,And, for his beauty, kissed him as he slept;Praying the gods to spare from breaking, long,The chain of precious beads then newly hungAbout the empire's neck. Ill-fated prince!When the glad music sounding at his birthWas muffled by disaster, love's brief day Waned to untimely twilight, his bare arm(The tiring of his royalty rent off)Must cleave its way alone, or wither so! Yet was he not ill-fated: when we seeThe purposes God puts about our wo,Behind the plowing storm run shining waves,Like beetles through new furrows; the same handThat peels the tough husk of the chrysalis,Gives it its double wings to fly withal;The rain that makes the wren sail heavilySets on the millet stocks their golden tops:And earthly immortality is boughtAt the great price of earthly happiness.Only the gods from the blue skies come down,Mad for the love of genius—Genius, named,Also, the Sorrowful; and from the clouds,That dim the lofty heaven of poesy,Falls out the sweetest music; in the earthThe seed must be imprisoned, ere to lifIt quicken and sprout brightly; the sharp strokeBrings from the flint its fiery property;And that we call misfortune, to the wiseIs a good minister, and knowledge brings:And knowledge is the basis whereon powerBuilds her eternal arches. In the dustOf baffled purposes springs up resolve,The plant which bears the fruit of victory.The old astrologers were wrong: nor star,Nor the vexed ghosts that glide into the light,From the unquiet charnels of the bad, Nor wicked sprite of air, nor such as leapNimbly from wave to wave along the sea,Enchanting with sweet tongues disastrous shipsTill the rough crews are half in love with death,Have any spell of evil witcheryTo keep us back from being what we would,If wisdom temper the true bent of us.We drive the furrow, with the share of faith,Through the waste field of life, and our own handsSow thick the seeds that spring to weeds or flowers,And never strong Necessity, nor Fate,Trammels the soul that firmly says, I will!Else are we play things, and 't is Satan's mockTo preach to us repentance and belief.Sweet saints I pray in piteous love agree,And from the ugly bosom of despairDraw back the nestling hand-heal the vexed heartAnd steady it what time the faltering faithKeeps its own council with determinate Will,The hardy pioneer of all success. "Among the ruins of my rightful hopesShall I crouch down and say I am content?It is not in my nature. I would scornThe weakness of submission, though to thatLife's miserable chance were narrowed up.Shame to the wearer of a beard who wearsNo manhood with it; double shame to himWhose plaything is the fillet of a crown.Even beasts whose lower senses are shut inFrom purposes of reason, have maintained A lordly disposition; taming notTo the sleek touches of the keeper's hand.The uses of humility are tillFor underlings and women—not for kings.And yet to fate, if there be any fate,Even the gods must yield; they cannot makeThe truth a lie, nor make a lie the truth;And if to them there be a limit fixed,Shall I, with my weak hands of dust, essayTo bend the untempered iron of destinyAbout my forehead? 'T is most maddening,The attempt and not the achievement—yet th' attemptIs all the wedge that splits its knotty wayBetwixt the impossible and possible.From the flat shrubless desert to the wavesOf willowy rivers, flowing bright and cool,From flowery thickets, up into the clouds,The bird may fly in its own atmosphere;But from the long dead reaches of blank spaceIts free wings fall back baffled. So it isWith gods and men: each have their atmospheres,Which they are free to move in, and to whichFrom ampler quests, they needs must flounder down.Sometimes, when goaded to the utmost vergeOf possible endurance—gathering allMy sorrows to one purpose, rebel like,I would step out into the dark, when lo!Fate ties my unwilling feet, and 'twixt my eyesAnd the great Infinite, full in the sunMakes quiet pictures. But ere I can shape This chaos of crushed manhood that I amTo any purposes, the faithless lightBreaks up, and all is darkness as it was.So are we crippled ever. Even likeThe snake some burden fastens to the ground,Now palpitating into stiff, bright rings,Now lengthening limberly along the dust,But gaining not a hair's breadth for its pains,Is thought its lengths now stretched to overclimbThe steep high walls about us; now, alas!Dragging back heavily into itself.Like am I to a drowning man, whose handsHold idly to the unsubstantial waves;Or like some dreamer, on whose conscious formA wretched weight lies heavy, while his tongueRefuses utterance to his agony.I can not rise out of this living death,More than the prematurely buried man,Who, waking from his torpor, feels his limbsBound, from their natural uses, in the shroud,And feebly strives to climb out of his grave. "Is there no strength, in sorrow or in prayer,To smite the brazen portals of the sun,And bring some beam to lead me into hope?Not so: the unoriginated PowerSweeps back the audacious thought to emptiness.What are the sufferings of one little life,Nay, of a thousand or ten thousand lives,Or what is all this large and curious world,Its meditative sighs, its hopes and loves, Rivers and mountains, rough and obstinate,Primeval solitudes, and darknessesWhere the days drop like plummets—what are all,Tumbled in one, and with a cerement bound,But as a bundle going up and down,In the vast ocean of eternity!High as the sun above the drop of dewThe gods dwell over us, and have they needTo buy our favor with some piteous sign?Their bliss we cannot lessen nor increase.But as we grow up to the topling heightsOf our ambitions, more and more we catchSome dim reflection of their sovereignty.The path is narrow that goes up, and on,And Fame a jealous mistress. They who reachTo take her hand must let all others go. "Borders and plaits of red and saphirineAre pretty in the robe of royalty,But to the drowning man, who strains againstThe whelming waves, the gaud were cumbersome,And straightway shredded off, and wet, wild rocksHugged to his bosom with a closer claspThan the young mother to her baby gives.When from his steady footing hungry DeathGoes moaning back, the time has come to pluckThe honorable gear. I must be wise,And clutching at whatever means I may,Climb to the moveless stepping of my throne.If youth were back again, or th' last year,Or even if yesterday might break anew, I would be vigilant; do thus, or thus. "So sit we idle, till another dayDies, and is wrapt in purple like the rest.Years run to waste, and age comes stealing slowOn our imperfect plans, till in our veinsThe life tide, sluggish, like an earth-worm lies.Where down yon mountain side the dragon's blood[10]Drips till the rocks, in the close noontide heat,Smoke mistily, the miztli[11]couchant lies,His muscles quivering with excess of life;But should he lie there till his hungry howlsCrash through the shaken forest like a storm,Would any beast divide his prey with him!Or wild bird, in the flowing of his maneTangling its bright wings, sing his pain away?Weak, foolish grief, be dwarfed to nothingness!Henceforth I will not listen to your moans.Did Colhua's princess[12] buy with mortal lifeThe honor to be mother of a god,And shall her woman's courage shame a king's?There is not air in all the blowing northFor me to breathe, with Maxtala alive!Yet am I beggared, orphaned of all hope,Herding with the coyotli,[13] while he reignsThe monarch of my palace; and the raids, From Zalahua's shade to Tlascala,Bend for his gracious favor till their locksFlow in a bath of fragrance at his feet.Pipers, with garlands prankt fantastical,Blow on their reeds to please his idleness,Making the air so sweetly musicalThat the hushed birds hang listening on the boughs.And, for his whim, victims are led to death,Till the red footprints of his headsmen grim,In the hot noon of summer never dry;And masks unholy cheat the hours, what time,Stringing black poppies round her forehead, EveWalks from her transient palace in the clouds,Her dark robe trailing down its base of blue;Or, when the morn, her sandals tied with light,Along the fields of heaven gathers the stars,Like blossoms, to her bosom. By the powerOf all the gods, his wanton lip shall drinkThe wine of wormwood. I will husk full soonThe splendor from his ugly body down,And whistle him out to run before my hate,Unkingdomed and unfriended, for his life.He, too, shall have, as I have now, the winds,At night, for chamberlains. My exile provesThe executioner's brief drawing off,To strike betwixt the eyes—the sly recoilBefore the deadly spring—this, only this!" On this wise spoke Hualco: otherwhiles,The drowsy monotone of murmurous beesCrept softly under pansied coverlids; Or the still flowing of the cool west wind,Or sunset, haply, or the unshaken stars,Or interfuse of fair things without name—But of such wondrous, magical potency,That Love, the leash of chance enchantment slipt,Has in his bed of beauty drowsed sometimes,While Goodness, clothed not of the beautiful,Pined, dying for his whisper—to his heartGave all their sweetest comfort. As the boughDrops in the storm its weights of rainy leaves,His roused soul dropt the heaviness away,And he went, mated with most rare delight,Through the green windings of the wilderness.Nature is kindly ever, and we allHave from her naked bosom drawn at timesDrafts sweet as crusted nectar. Charily!She gives us entertainment, if we comeWith hearts unsanctified and noisy feet,Into her tents of pious solitude.But when we go in worshipful, she spreadsHer altars with the sacrament of peace,And lifts into her solemn psalmodyOur spirits' else unuttered melodies.'T is not the outward garniture of thingsThat through the senses makes creation fair,But the out-flow of an indwelling light,That gives its lovely aspect to the world.Sometimes his memory wandered to the hours When in the Mexic capital,[14] a child,And yet an exile, or in his own halls,By sufferance of the usurper, who had slain,(While he, concealed, look'd from the spreading palmThat swung its odorous censers in the court,)Texcuco's sovereign, who at bay had heldThe trampling foe, tumultuous, which TepanSent, with a robber thirst and barbarous strength,To subjugate the fair land of the world—More fair for courtesy than even the artsWhich reared its temples and its palaces;Held them at bay, until his chiefs and legions,Borne down like cornstocks in a whirlwind, layAlong the wide field of blood-wanting war;[15]And sometimes, past these scenes, to better hours,Wherein he sought a mastery of the lore,Far-reaching through the arches, low and dark,Which are the entrance of the eternal world—That greatest wisdom which a king should learn,Who with the gods would find himself a friend.But these were only sunbeams in his clouds,And often from their flush of brief delightAn unseen spirit plucked him, and his soulWent darkly out from its serenity.For sometimes, keen and cold and pitiless truth,In spite of us, will press to open light The naked angularities of things,And, from the steep ideal, the soul dropIn wild and sorrowful beauty, like a star,From the the blue heights of heaven into the sea.In the dumb middle of the night he heardThe plaining voice of one[16] who died for him,Saying, "Hualco, let my wasted bloodCement the broken beauty of thy throne,And so shine evermore upon thine eyesLike bright veins in the marble." He could seeHis pleading innocence, thrust by tyranny,Over the grave's steep edges, to the dark,And all the train of lovelight, hithertoDrawn after his firm footsteps, faded offTo gray, blank mildew; see the dying smile,The soul's expression, falling into dust.Sometimes, in pictures which his fancy made,Along Tozantla's hills he saw him go,With the wild scarlet of its running flowers,Tying his bundles of sharp arrows up,And in the shadows of the holy woodRest in the noontide—lithe-limbed antelopes,And strings of wild birds, ruffled, open-winged,Strewing the ground about him; and, at night,He saw him cast his burden at the door Of the clay hut wherein his mother dwelt,Her love bewildered into wonderment,As, with a hunter's eloquence, he toldHow his quick shaft had blinded a huge beastThat needs must stagger on his cunning trap.The tzanahuei's warble seemed his voice,Singing some boyish roundelay of love,And murmurous fall of water, like his cooTo his pet tigress, penning her at night. There was another picture, whose dark groundNo gleam of light illumined: hands, close-boundFrom all the arrows, and the jetty locksClipt for the axe's edge; brows pale, with pain,And sad eyes turned in mute reproach to him;And this it was that wrung his miseryTo that worst phase of all—the terrible senseOf injury done, with utter impotence,To lift the pallid forehead out of death,And crown it with our sorrow. I believeSuch griefs make many madmen, driving someInto the lonesome wilderness, where allThat fine intelligence which shines intrenchedFast in the mortal eyes of innocent men,Throbs fitful through the film, obscured at lastTo the scared glaring of a hunted heast:And others, of more speculative souls,Pushing to realms fantastic, where, athirst,They see the fountains sucked up by the sand,And hungry, pluck the red-cheeked fruits, to find The mortifying purples which make madSuch as do eat and die not; and where dwellShapes incomplete, with brows of pale misease,That in the moon's infrequent glimmeringRun from their shadows, gibbering their fear;Where earth seems from its beauteous uses wornAs with a slow eternity of pain—Battered and worn, till no sweet grass can growUpon its old, scarred body, any more.This was a grief indeed. No stabbing steelStrikes through the dark like such a memory.And every day he went into the past,And lived his history over, setting up,Against each false step, some excusing plea:If this, or this transfixing point of timeWere a nonentity—if such an actHad been beforehand of celerity—And such a pretty dalliance with chancePressed into service,—he had held secureIn his own hands, the destiny which nowStood at a murderer's mercy. For us all,Within some fortunate moment, good is lodged,And chance may possibly tumble on the prize—But vigilance is opportunity. I think, of all the sweetest gifts that beStrung in the rosary of the love of God,And flung about us mortals, there is noneHath such divine excess of excellenceAs that creative and mad facultyWhich out of nothing strings the lyres that ring Along the shadowy palaces of dreams,And so ring on and echo down the world,Till, where time's circle meets eternity,The trancing shivers of rapt melodiesCrumble away to silence, and fade off.Blest is the wanderer out of human loveWho hath been answered by this oracle.What need hath he of the poor shows of power,Who can charm angels out of heaven, and crossTheir light wings on his bosom, in his song?What need hath he of mortal company—Weak heritors of passion and of pain—That he should care to cower beneath their roofs?What if his locks are heavy, drenched with dew—Beings that duller mortals cannot seeWill stoop above him, and between their palmsPress them out dry, or the wild breeze may stopAnd blow them loosely open to the sun.Widen no rings about your fires for himWho catches the white mantles of the clouds,And round his bosom in the chilly nightGathers the golden tresses of the stars;For no abiding city men might build,In the flat desert of their quietude,Could stay him from his long bright wanderings.The sea waves, roughly breaking on the rocks,The terrible crash of the live thunderstroke,Or the low earthquake's rumble, on his earFall in a softer music than on yoursThe lovely prattle of your lisping babes: For in his soul is a transforming powerBy you unapprehended and unknown.And he of whom I sing, shaping his woTo the charmed syllables of poesy,[17]Built visionary kingdoms, and recrownedHis naked brows out of the light of dreams.Even as the white steeds of the desert keepBefore the clouds of hot and blinding sand,Ran his wild visions forward of the truth.Sometimes he sung of maidens, shut in towersOf unhewn rocks, cold bowers of beauty, whereThe moonlight blew across the beds of loveTinged with the scarlet of the sacrifice;Of the blue sky sometimes, or of the moonWalking night's cloudy wilderness, as walksThe white doe through a jungle; of steep rocksBurnt red and pastureless, where strings of goatsClimbed, hungry, to the rattle of picked bonesIn the near eyry; sometimes of the hourWhen in the sea of twilight the round sunSinks slow and sullen, and, one after one,Circles of shadows crusted thick with starsCome up and break upon the shore of night,But mostly were his visions sorrowful;For all the higher attributes of life Have still some touch of sadness: love and hopeDwell ever in the haunted house of Fear,And even the God incarnate wept to seeThe blanched and purposeless repose whereinWe lie at last—our busy cares all done,Shut in the darkness by white heavy death,Like dreams within the hueless gates of day. So busy thought bloomed into poesy,As buds bloom into flowers—bloomed and was drownedIn storms of tears, and fell back on his heart,As falls back to the earth the pretty mothThat flies into the rain—its wild wings drenchedFrom beauty to the color of the ground.And the spring sprouted, and the summer smiled,And day went darkly down, and morn came upAnd ran between the mountains goldenly;The wandering wasp shut up its thin blue wings,Pricking the soft green bark of the capoteWith mortices—a ceaseless builder he;Nympha of bees hung on the oaken boughs,Feasted the birds; and red, along the grass,The heads of burning worms like berries shone.Others, with yellow venomous prickles set,And coiled in globes, stuck bur-like in the shrubs,While from their nests came out into the lightThe black-downed spider and brown scorpion.At night, the shining beetles, flying thick,Glimmered, his tent-lights, and the woods hung low Their long bright boughs-green curtains shutting downAbout his slumber-while the blessed dewSunk pearl-like 'twixt his long and uncombed locks.For whether morn ran goldenly alongThe mountain rifts, and with her kisses brokeThe blue and ruby-hearted flowers apart,Or whether night fell black along the hills,Tezcuco's heir, alone and sceptreless,Travelled the woods, a price upon his head. There was a cabin, with an aloe thatch,And gables of cool moss, whereby three treesRuffled their tops together, through the whichA red vine ran convolved, as in the clouds,Blowing and blending in the twilight wind,A vein of fire runs zig-zag. South from the door,A fountain, breaking into golden snow,Cut a soft slope of fresh and beautiful green,With its superfluous wealth, at evening fringedBy goats, unprisoned, slowly feeding home.Close by this fountain, screened by drooping boughs,A wheel turned idly to the breeze's touch,And from the unbusy distaff the teased flaxTwisted to tangly wisps. Here, until now,Spinning among the birds, a peasant's child,With eyes poetic, tawny cheeks, and hairDark as a storm in winter, hath been usedTo sing the sun asleep. Fate is discreet,And grapples as with hooks of steel the ends Of her great purposes; therefore the maid,Who sleeps beneath the aloe thatch at night,And sings and spins among the birds all day,Is gone to meet the exigence that weavesThe dark thread of her story with my song.Ah, as she cuts the shining jointed stocks,And packs them into heaps, tossing awayThe heavy tresses from her stooping brow,Little she deems their sable near to lineThe pearly rimming of Tezcuco's crown! A pall of clouds, bordered with dun faint fire,Veiled the dead face of day, and the young moon,Washed to her whitest splendor in the sea,Took the audacious pelting of the wavesBetwixt her horns, nor staggered, and so clombTo fields of sweeter pasture. In the west;A ridge of pines, that burnt themselves to flameAn hour ago, set their jagged topsBlack in th' horizon. Thence, suddenly,Flitted a shape or shadow, and the feetOf the Tlascalan maiden, Tlaära,Were touched with prayerful kisses. Well-a-day!The ear too deaf to hear—though all at once,Sung fifty nightingales, covering the woodsWith undulating sweetness, as a cloudOf yellow bees covers a limb of flowers—Drinks eagerly the faintest sound of praise,And the poor peasant was less firmly heldFrom quickly flying, by the hands that clungTo her robe's hem, than by the kingly brow Dropping against the ground, obsequious.Across the hills she heard the hot pursuit,And, for a moment, came a blinding waveFrom their far tops, of splendor; then, as oneWhose foot is on the serpent's head, she cried,"Off, tempting fury! my weak woman's hands—Mock if thou darest!—have in them strength enoughTo bind a thousand of thy black-winged crew,And hold them level with their beds of fire.It is most false that they are strong alone,With a cold guard of virtue or of fear,Who keep thee from them always. She who onceHugs to her bosom any imp of thine,And rends it after, or with desperate will,Wrenches her heart from its infirmity,And on the very edges of the pitShakes the red shadow from her soul, and turnsTo front the demon that has dragged her there—Believe me, she is stronger than they allWho dare not wait to listen!" Oh, to suchDoubt not but that some piteous god will come,Beauteously whitening down the blue of heaven,And feed their souls with the blest sweetnessesDrawn out of Mercy's everliving wells,Till the air round them, with tumultuous joyHangs shivering like a wilderness of leaves,And drifts of light run rippling through the cloudsLike music through the wings of cherubim.And so she hid him—in among the stocks— Smothering the whispered prayer, "I am thy king,Hunted to death: wilt have the damned priceThat a usurper sets upon my head,Or be my angel, as thou look'st to be?" The hungry hunters of his life came on,And saw the maiden at her quiet work,Close to the reedy prison, and so wentMisguided forward.[18] Such tumultuous joyAs filled her bosom only they may knowWho, voyaging beyond mortality,Feel the prow's grating, golden, on the stars.Forgive her for that moment hesitant;Forgive her, if she saw the aloe thatchOf the clay cabin, where all day she spun,Widen above a palace, broad and brave;Forgive her if she saw, if so she did,Her jetty trailing locks strung round with gems,Drawing the eyes of princes after them;Forgive, for she was human, and we allAt sometime have had need to say, Forgive!Far from the banished Eden though we be,Some beautiful provision meets our need—Slumber, and dreamy pillows, for the tired; For labor, plenteous harvests, and for loveThe crowning nuptial; for old age, repose,And for the worn and weary, kindly deathTo make the all-composing lullaby.But nothing in this low and ruined worldRears the meek impress of the Son of GodSo surely as forgiveness. The last plea,O'er slighted love and sorrow rising sweet,Lit for a time the ancient realm of death,As if within its still and black abysmA new-born star ope'd its gold-lidded eye,And for a season in the depths of hellCooled the red burning like a cloud of dew.Like to two billows, tossed and worried long,That on some fearful breaker meet and close,Upon a desperate point of time there metThis youth's and maiden's unshaped destinies—Met, and so closed to one. Oh, pitiful!Oh, woful! that so bright a tide should ebb,And leave along this good life as it doesShoals of dry, barren dust. Somewhere is wrong! And night was past, and in the lap of dayThe morning nestled, and yet other nightsFollowed by other days had come and gone,And the wild sorrow of the tempter's voiceHad dwarfed to utter silence, yet the maidHad loosed her clasping never on the cross,[19] Bought at so great price of earthly fame.But its rough, thorny wood, so heavy once,Had budded bright with many a regal flower.The heir of kingly generations laidHis crown upon her lap, for her sweet eyes,And, for the zoning of her fond arms, gaveThe warrior's belted glory: lovers they,And blesséd both—he calm in manhood's pride,She trembling at the top of ecstacy.How shall I paint the dear delicious hours!No lilies swimming white in summer's waves,No dove, soft cooing to her little birds,No hushes of the half reluctant leaves,When the south winds are wooing, passionful,No bough of ripe red apples, streaked with whiteAnd full in the fall sunshine, were so fair,The blushes of a thousand summertimes,Blent into one, and broken at the core,Were in its sweetness incomparableTo the close kisses of the mouth we love,In the voluptuous beauty of the clime,That prisons summer everlastingly,Tangling her bright hair with a thousand flowers,Some large and heavy—reddening round her brows,Like sunset round the day, what time she lies,The cool sea billows climbing to her arms—Some white and rimmed with gold, and purple some,Soft streaked with faintest pink, and silver-edged,Some azure, amber stained, and ashen some,Dropt with dull brown and yellow, leopard-like, With others blue and full of crescent studs,Or jetty-belled, fringed softly out of snow—So prodigal is nature of her sweets—Dwelt they, the past, the future, all forgot."Henceforth thy love, soft-burning like a star,Shall stand above my crown and comfort me,"Hualco said, and Tlaära's soft cheekFlushed out of olive, scarlet, and her heartDrank in the essence of all happiness.It was as if humanity attainedThe stature of its immortality,And earth were gathered up into the heavens.For Love makes all things beautiful, and findsNo wilderness without its pleasure tent,While Genius goes with melancholy stepsSearching the world for the selectest formsOf high, and pure, and passionless excellence—Large-browed, unmated Genius—yearning stillFor the divinities which in its dreamsBrighten along the mountain-tops of thought.She could not pause, but birds pecked round her feet,Fluttering and singing; if at eve she walked,The clouds rained tender dews upon her head;Meeting a hungry lion in the woods,Grinding his tusks, he crouched and piteous whined,Then turned his great sad face and fled, away—Love was her only armor, yet he fled.Her wheel spun round itself; the trickiest goatStood patient for the milking; jubilant,The smooth-stemmed corn its gray-green tassels shook, As she went binding its broad blades to sheaves.Sunshine which only she could see, made fairEven alien fields; and if Hualco sighed,She put a crown of kisses on his brow,And drew him, with her smiling, from the thoughtsThat wandered toward Tezcuco's palaces.And for the vague, unfriendly fear, that madeHis lessening love a possibility,She gave into his hand the secretest keyOf her heart's treasury. Sometimes they walkedBetween the moonbeams slanting up the hills,In ways of shadow, edged with white cold light,Or sat in solitudes where never soundFed the dumb lips of echo; but the flatOf desertness, low lying, bare, and brown,Their praises like a verdurous meadow drew,And the black nettle and rude prickly burrChallenged of each some tender eloquence.Along their paths mute stones grew voluble,And sweeter voices than of twilight birds,Filling Olintha's mountain solitudes,Flowed out of silence to their listening:For silence hath a language and a glanceMay burn into the heart like living fire,Or freeze its living currents into ice.Sometimes he told of maidens, fair as she,That for his sake had folded in their armsThe awful flames of martyrdom; but quickThe piteous flowing of her gentle tearsDried, in the burning crimson of his kiss. What was't to them, that in the hemlock woods[20]Sad priests kept fast and vigil, with stooped browsUnder their hoods of thorns, low from the light,As once the chieftain of the Aztec hostsHeard the wild bird, responsive to his thought,Still sadly crying o'er and o'er, "Tihui,"[21]Warning from Aztlan all his tribe away?So they, in every murmurous wind, could hearThe sanctifying echoes of their hopes;Daily, the tremulous arch above the world,Resting upon the mountains and the waves,For love's sake deepened its eternal blue;In the red sea of sunset, not a starSwam in its white and tremulous nakedness,Doubling the blessed pulses in their hearts,That seemed not for that office specially made;Such wondrous power hath that fair deity,Pictured sometimes as tyrannous as fair—If right or wrongfully, I cannot tell,But I do truly think there be few heartsFor which at some time he hath not unloosedThe blushing binding of his nimble shafts.Poor Tlaära forgot that ugly deathBurrowed in mortal soil, when that her lordKissed her, and called her "sweetest;" all her joyWas basemented upon a smile of his;And if he frowned, the sun shut up his light Ah, Tlaära, thou dream'st; awake, be wiseAlready the sleek, golden cub, erewhileFondled and hidden in thy bosom, growls. As some poor spinner puts a little woolAmong her flax, to save the web from fire,So she has tried to twist with her poor nameSome little splendor. Fate has baffled her;But when the mists of tears shall clear away,She may attain to such majestic heightsAnd atmospheres of glory as shut upLife's lower planes, with all the murmurs madeO'er the death-fluttering of fledgling hopes—All discords horrible, and rude complaints,That rise, when at some direful exigenceEven courage staggers in its way, and lays,Bestial, its radiant front against the dust,Loud bellowing out its awful pain, alone. When a friend dies, while yet the face has onThe smiling look of life, 't is wise to layThe shroud about it, and so go again,Among what joys are left, with decent calm.When that which seemed the angel of our heavenShuts close its wings, and its white body shrinksTo a black, glistering coil, 't is little safeTo wait the growth of fangs. And when we findThat which, a little distant, seemed to usThe clambering of roses on the rocks,To be the flag of pirates, shall we stayHugging the coast, and, dropping anchor, huntThe bones of murdered men? or shall we wait— Deserted, and betrayed, and scarce alive—To front the arrows of Love's sinking sun,And tempt the latest peril? Just as wellThe obstinate traveller might in pride opposeHis puny shoulder to the icy slipOf the blind avalanche, and hope for life;Or Beauty press her forehead in the grave,And think to rise as from the bridal bed.But woman's creed knows not philosophy—Her heart-beats are the rosary that tellsHer love off, even to the cross; and verilyIn telling this, and telling only this,Can they fill out her nature: so againCome we to our sweet truster, Tlaära. "What! goes my lord alone?" So spake she once;"The spinning work is done, the milking past,And past the busy cares. See! the green hillsSit in the folding even-light, so fair,The dark house could not hold me, but for thee.Nay, chide me not, I will not speak a word,But walk so softly, love—blest, oh so blest,Treading the earth thy steps make proud before me!"She stood on tiptoe waiting for the kissTo give her, in the accustomed way, reply.But there was silence at the first, and thenThe sullen answer, "I would be alone."The world fell sick and reeled before her eyes,And in the dead and heavy atmosphere,Where heaven had based itself a moment past,A vulture spun down low, as if its wings Could make no further head—all else was blank.Poor simple girl! a little while the tearsFlowed faster than the blossoms from the bough'Gainst which she leaned, despairing. A great woCrushes the fading of a centuryInto a moment; and fair Tlascala,Smiling so lately through the purpling light,Lay like a shoal of ashes, dry and bare.But hope, however smitten or borne down,Is quick to right herself, and once astirThe world grows young again. And TlaäraChid presently her sighs and tears away,For the seductive whispering, which said,For her sake crown and kingdom had been lost;Chid them away with quivering lip, and smiled,And sought in cares, against her lord's return,To wile the lengthening absence. As the bird,Wounded, not death-struck, gathers up its wings,True to its instinct, she, still true to hers,Gathered up all her courage. He, the while,Her lord, Hualco, with drooped eyes, and browSullen with sorrow and remorseless pain,Talked to his troubled soul in this wild sort:"So I am he, who in yet beardless yearsDid plot the ways to unkingdom Maxtala;To measure his vile body with my sword,And find what space would rid the world of him;Ay, he who even thought to be a king—Pining and love-sick in a peasant's cot,Where I can never rightly apprehend The distances betwixt me and my crown.A king; my crown! Nay, it was all a dream,That went before me from my youth till now—More than a dream, it was a life-long lieReaching into the vale of years, and stillA brightness, wrapping up some old white hairs!And can I see it fading, and yet smile?It is as if a corpse had power to feelThe tying of its hands. My brain must crackOr I must slip the dusty leash I wear,And run into the dark. "See! the dead dayDrifts out in scarlet light, and the round moonWhitens like day-break through the sullen clouds.I scarce can see our cabin through the gapsOf hills and woods, the night comes on so fast.Yes, I can see it now—the heavenly eyesOf that sweet lady, pretty Tlaära,Illumining the window toward the sea.She loves me, even me, who have besideNo love in all the world; her little handsPart softly back the redwood's rosy limbs,Low swinging in the winds, lest they should hideThis sullen, crownless front—dear Tlaäira!—And from that listening I was near to bePlucked off by devils; I was well nigh blind,Still gazing upon laurels that were knitWith the white light of immortality.Sweet Tlaära, be patient, while I mournThese last weak tears behind the heavy hearse That bears the old dream from me: then againI will go singing, as we walk at eveUnder the raining of the forest flowers,And count my homely verses once againBy the brown spots our gentle leopard has,And beauty to our cabin will return." Poor Tlaära, her tamest goat came close,And leaned his head against her, and the windRested a little, kissing her wet eyes,And blowing down her hair, the while she stood,Her sad thoughts dropping in the well of love,To tell how deep it was; an evil sign—Only despair can take its measurement.A little time ago the sun came up,Shearing the curly fleeces from the hills;Now he is dead, and the pale widowed westHath slid the burial earth upon his face."Blind eyes of mine," she cries, "you cannot see,Though he should rise and climb the heavens again,In the dim days to come; nor if, at night,Under the silver shadows of the clouds,With some red blushing star the moon keeps tryst—No more, oh never more! blind, blind with tears!Earth is stript bare of beauty, and, oh, lost!I have forgone, close gazing upon thee,The way struck open through the grave to heaven,And needs must vaguely feel along the dark!" "Forgive me, sweet, the shadow of a crownSwept through love's sunshine, and my heart grew chill"— So aid the recreant prince, half penitent—"But not, my little empress, false to thee.Nay, look upon me close and tenderly,For I am like the child that pettishlySlips down the nurse's knees, and straight climbs up,Ending his pout with kisses—prythee, smile,And think this transient mood the thing it was,A hollow bubble on the sea of love,Which thou mayst break for pastime, pretty one." As one, close pressing to the fountain's brim,Crumbles the black earth off into the wave,And with an empty pitcher goes away—So turned she, thirsting, from the fount of joy. "Sweet Tlaära, thou wrongst me," he replied;"Thy hands put down the flames of martyrdom,Dilating for me like the eyes of fiends,And with their gentle tendance through long daysAnd nights of exile, made me strong enoughTo repossess a kingdom, that, henceforth,Shall brighten round thy beauty; on thy lipI press the seal of true allegiance,My joy, my queen forever: Art content?Or shall I swear, by every soldier's tomb,Sunken along the war-grounds of the past,My soul is thine henceforward, nor in heaven,Nor in the heaven of heavens, is light enoughTo sweep thy shadow from my royalty.Command it, and I make the sweet oath o'er,Till yonder brightly rising planet creepsInto the rosy bosom of the morn, And the day breaks along the orient,White as the snow-topt mountain. Dost thou weep?Well, let thy tears wash out the sad mistrustDarkening the beauty of serener faith,And we be lovers as we were before.My life, young empress, is involved in thineAs water is in water: mingling waves,Catching one light and shade, our lives shall flowTill they strike broken on the ice of death.But this, our happy summering of loveMust sometime have its ending. YesterdayWe had been just as ready as to-day,To-morrow will not be a better time,So let it touch its limit, here and now." "Oh, my Hualco, oh, my best beloved,If thou wilt leave me, yet remember thou,When glory shall grow heavy in thy hands,And, with its burdening circle, thy brows ache,That sober twilight, when, erewhile, weak armsFolded them up, thus, with a crown of love.Oh, think of her who, pressing down thy cheek,Dared to look up into thy eyes for hope,Even though she felt its lately crimsoning flowers,Burned to gray ashes, cold beneath her lip.Think how her trembling hand swept off thy locks,As one who lays the shroud back from her dead,And gives the last wild kisses to the dust."So Tlaära made answer, seeing notHow night stretched tempest-like along the sky,And in the blustery sea the tumbling waves Shattered the gold repeatings of the stars,As through the rents of darkness they looked out;Only the silence heard the anguished cry—"Clasp me a moment longer; once againKiss me, and say you love me; once, once more,Put back this fallen hair, as yesternight!Is it not white and heavy, like dead hair?This burning pain must bleach the blackness out.I cannot hear you speak; I cannot feelYour kisses—closer, sweet! nor yet—nor yet;I cannot see the eyes that said to mineTheir speechless love so kindly—God! his needsAre all above my answering—take me Thou." The harvester is pleased who finds a flowerBlood-red or golden, in the dusky wheat,Rustling against his stooping, but the childLaughs for its beauty, and forgets to glean,Crumpling its leaves with kisses manifold,Till in her pastime, idly curious,She turns it inside out, and finds it blackAnd rough with poisonous blisters. Such a childWas Tlaära, and such a flower, her love.She saw no more the hills of TlascalaCrooking their monstrous bases in and out,To give the light capricious stream its will—Nor saw nor heard the never weary sea,Fretting its way through marl and ironsandTo fiery opal and bright chrysophrase:For 'twixt her eyes and all the sweet discourseNature, our quiet mother, makes for such As wrap their painéd brows in her green skirts,Fear, like a black fen, stretched for muddy miles.She only saw Hualco's glorious fate,And in its shadow a poor peasant girl,Pining forlorn. Over all sounds she heard,Travelling across the wild and piny hills,And over many a reach of juniper,Prickly with brier and burr, the voice of war.Regal with sunbeams, which the journeying daysTrenched in their ancient snows, the mountains seemedTo mock her low estate; though when Love's tongueTalked of the self-same splendors once, they stoodSerene like prophets, under whose white hairsThe lines of victory-seeing thoughts are fixed.Beyond their bright tops great Hualco strainedHis staring eyes, in one far-reaching look,Fixed on that glittering pinnacle, a throne;All hope, all love, all utmost energy,To one determinate purpose crucified.So in her pictures Fancy fashioned him;Nor did she with deceiving colors paint.A nation from its slumbering was roused,And centering to one mortal blow the strengthOf all its sinews. On ten thousand shellsThe strings were stirred, axes were set to edge;The while the morning music of the hornWent doubling on the track of Tyranny,And startling up the echoes, that ran wildAlong the trembling hill-tops, in full cry.Ruffled lay Pazcuaro's silver waves Under the storm: melodious, and the beltOf black and shaggy pines that Arrio wore,With deadly spears of itzli, bristled bright;For the roused realm was risen to replaceThe usurpéd scepter in the kingly handOf its long exiled but true sovereignty. So ended "the sweet summering of love"—The royal lover of the forest maidWent back as from imprisonment, like him—The wondrous Mexic of the olden time—Changed to the morning star,[22] henceforth to shineSerenely in the sky of victory.The maiden went again to solitude,To fight alone the conflicts of the heart,And pray that Homeyoca would, in love,Crop the wild thoughts that climbed about a throne,And modulate her dreams to qualitiesBefitting chaste and sad humility,—But oftener, to cry in bitterness,As Totec[23] from the house of sorrow cried. The blue-eyed spring with all her blowing winds,And green lap brimming o'er with dainty sweets,Wakened no dulcet light about her heart;Nor nimble dance of waves, at shut of eve,Under the charméd moonlight, nor the groves,With all their leafy arches full of birds,—Not maddened Jurruyo's wild sublimity, When, from his hell of lava tossing highHis fiery arms, that redden all the heavens—As, from his forehead, down his beard of pines,Trickle the blood-like flames—could fix her gaze,Or keep her thoughts from wandering on the wayThe footsteps of her kingly lover went.The goats-grew wild, for Tlaära forgotThe times of milking; idle stood the wheel,A loom for spiders; to the heavy lengthOf the dark shadow, keeping pace with death,Her sighs drew out themselves, and listening lowShe leaned against the faded face of earth,As if its great dumb breast could move with life. The lost wayfaring man, whose scanty lampIn the wild rainy middle of the nightBurns sudden out—waits patient till he seesThe white-horned Daybreak pierce the cloudy east,Travelling alone and slow, and the wet woodsWhich from his mottled forehead parted, black,Swing goldenly together. But, alas!In the white dome of gentle womanhoodLove's sunrise knows no fellow. Sweetest heart!How could she look for comfort? idols madeNo answer to her praying; and at last,Out of this sorrowful continent of lifeHer visions failed of resting: mortal loveDrew back the hopes which vine-like clomb againstThe columned splendors of eternity.Forgive her, Thou, whose greatest name is Love,If, with her heaven of ruins coupled against The chasms that divide us from thy throne,She saw imperfectly—saw not at all—For, 'twixt the fartherest reach of human eyesAnd the eternal brightness round about thee,There lies an unsunned shoal, a blank of gloom;Which no keen continuity of thoughtCan burn or blast its way through, till the graveOpens its heavy and obstructive valves. Sometimes she plaited berries in her hair,And, sitting by the sea, called on each wave,As it had been her lover, to come upAnd put its quieting arm around her neck,And hug her close, and kiss her into sleep;"It is our fault, and not the gods'," she said,"If we outstay our pleasures, pining paleIn barren isolation, when one stepDivides us only from the realm of rest—Is it not so, oh great and friendly sea?"But the waves put their beaded foreheads downAgainst the moon, late wasting if their arms,Now blushing, bashful, for her beauty's growth,And left her waiting on the wild, wet bank,Her meditations all uncomforted.Sometimes a kindly memory would pluckA sunbeam from the midday of her love,And grief was awed to silence, and her heartHushed into pulseless calm, as is the bardWhat time some grander vision than the rest,Swims, planet-like, along his starry dreams. Oh, what a terrible day for Maxtala Was hovering in the rousing of that host,That, robbed unjustly of its majesty,Cried, like a whelpless lioness, for blood!As the cencoatli,[24] with its fiery coilsIllumining the darkness, warns asideThe step of the unequal traveller,So might the glitter of that hydra's front,Under its bossy wilderness of shields,Have warned the tyrant from the onslaught off. For stripling lovers, maidens all the dayBusied themselves with plumes, or, sedulous,Wrought into bracelets gems and precious stones;Some green like emeralds, some divinely white,And some with streaky brown in grounds of gold,With milky pearls, and sea-blue amethysts,All curiously inwoven, meet to pleaseThe princely eyes of the discrownéd king.Through the green passes of TlacamamaStruck the white[25] columns of young warriors,Eager to wheel into the battling lines—Armed with the triple-pointed tlalochtli,The maquahuitl, and the heavy bowStrung with the sinews of sea-cow, or lynx;While stern old men, their gray hairs winding back,With most serene and steady majesty,From helms of tiger's or of serpent's heads,Went forth to death as to a festival. Along Mazatlan's summits, wild and high,The gathered legions hovered like a fleet,Dark in the offing. Ensigns mingled bright,Above the long lines lifted, as sometimesA cloud of scarlet-hooded zopilots[26]Hangs mute along the sky, foretelling storms. Tizatlan's heron, wild and sad, was there,There couchant lay Tepeticpac's fierce wolf,The bundle of sharp arrows in his paws,With Mexic's dread armorial hard by—The eagle and the tiger, combatant;While, under the sea-city's golden net,Ocoteloleo's green bird, on the rock,In lonely beauty waited for the storm,Quick sweeping like a sea loosed from its bounds. So was Hualco's kingdom repossessed,So was the tyrant Maxtala o'ercome.Oh! it was piteous when the fight was done,And the moon stood, o'er the disastrous field,In pale and solemn majesty, as oneFresh from the kisses of the dead, to seeHis harmless corse decked out with all the showsBefitting the fair form of royalty,While all his Jocks, torn from their net of gems,In bloody tangles hung about his eyes,Blind, but wide glaring, and his unknit handsClutched at the dust in impotent despair. And he whose hunger-sunken eyes erewhile Burned through the forests, where he wandered onceLike a lamenting shadow—was a king;And the delights and pastimes of a court,The expulsive might of absence, and the pride,Unfolding and dilating, ring by ring,Under the sun of triumph—these, ere long,So ministered to soft forgetfulness,That the low echo of forsaken loveSmote on his heart no longer, and the eyesThat of his praises gathered half their light,With sorrowful reproaches vexed no more.Cold god, reposing in the northern ice,Whose white arms nightly reach along the heavens!Search out the stars, malignant, that so oftHave crossed the orbit of divinest bliss,And draw them, with some pale enchantment, downFrom the good constellations—all their lengthsOf shining tresses, making them so fair,Coiling like dying serpents, as they sink. 'T is not so much premeditated wrongThat fills the world with sorrow and dismay,As influences of demons, mischievous,Hurrying impassioned impulses to actsThat fast and penance never can undo.This is my theory, and right or wrong,'T is surely higher pleasure to believeThat men are better than they seem, than worse.And he, this prince of whom my story is,Was a good prince, as princes be, and gave,On every day, sweet alms and charities, That made him named of thousands in their prayers;His reign with deeds of glory was so strewedThat they still shine upon us from the past,As emeralds and ivory shine alongThe sand-track of some perished caravan.Houses of skulls, that erewhile all the hillsMade ghastly white, he levelled, and instead,Walled with tazontli, pinnacled with gold;And strong with beams of cedar and of fir,Along the ruins, sacred temples rose;[27]About his throne stood lines of palacesKissing the clouds, exceeding beautifulWith porphyry columns, and lined curiouslyWith that white stone dividing into leaves;And baths and gardens, and soft-flowing streams,Made all Tezcuco's vale a goodly sight.Schemes pondering, or infirm or feasible,To make his subjects happy, still he dweltIn that unruffled air that may be peace,But was, nor then, nor ever will be, bliss.And all his people loved him more than feared,Nor looked upon his crown with envious eyes:Shall the small lily, growing in the grass,Be envious of the aloe's dome of flowers,That keeps the blowing winds from its sweet home?Or shall the soft cenzontli hush its songAnd pine, in the green shelter of the bough,For that the eagle, silent on the rock,Can dip his plumage in the sun at will? Once, feasting with the lord of Tepechan—[28]A vassal warrior, whose mighty armHad hewn his way to many victories—To do him honors, with her ministries,There came a damsel so exceeding fair,That, with the light of her dark eyes withdrawn,A shadow over all his kingdom went;But in his heart, (for love is prophecy,)He felt that she already was electThe bride of him whose festive guest he was.So, to himself, to justify his thought,He said, "This old man must not wed this maid,For that the grave will cover him too soon,And so, young beauty be made desolate:And yet, perchance, not absolute for that,(For all the burdening weight of threescore yearsLies like a silver garland on his brow,)But that I know he cannot have her love,Or having, could not keep it: that were falseTo all of Nature's unwarpt impulses;It is as if a budding bough should blushOut of a sapless trunk; it cannot be—Else is harsh violence to reason done,And all true fitness sunken from the noonInto the twilight of uncertainty.Can the dull mist, where the swart Autumn hidesHis wrinkled front and tawny cheek, wind-shorn,Be sprinkled with the orange light that binds Away from her soft lap, o'erbrimmed with flowers,The dew-wet tresses of the virgin year?Or can the morning, bridegroomed by the sun,Turn to the midnight, and be comforted!So for their larger amplitude of weal,This vagrant fancy—for 't is nothing more—Must not nor ever shall be consummate.For this true soldier—ah, a happy thought!—I'll make an expedition presently;For now that I bethink me, in the warsHis arm might wield a heavy truncheon yet;'T were good, I think, he wore his helmet up—A brow so rounded with grave majesty,Would strike a sharper terror to the foeThan all the triple weapons of a host.This strength of his 't were pity not to show.He hath no lack of courage, but, alas!He does not know his own supremacy;Aware of it, I'll even dare be swornThis harmless stratagem were rated right;I'll make a hint of it in some soft way;And, for the princess, there may chance to beSome vacancy i' the court—some office slightMeet for the gracing of her gentle hands.If it so fall—I know not if it will,(I think my women a full complement,)—She shall not want my kingly privilegeFor any pretty wilfulness she chooseTo wing the hours and make away the griefThat needs must follow the great embassy, (Forced on alone by sharpest exigence,)That takes this old man back into the field,For he will scarcely hope to come alive,I sorely fear, from the encounters fierceAnd perilous offices of bloody war. When sleep that night came down upon the eyesOf the good prince—for he was good, withal,And did such acts as are immortalized—He saw this famous lord of TepechanThrust sidelong in a ditch, his white hair stirredUnder the howlings of a mountain dog,That surfeited upon his shrunken corse;But the maid came to him in fairer guise—He heard her singing through the palace walls,Her locks down-flowing from a wreath of pearls. This was a dream, and when the king awokeHe said 't was strange, indeed 't was passing strange,Nay, quite a miracle, that sleeping thoughtsShould take no guise or shape of reasoningThat ever hath possessed our waking hours,But balance, rather, on insanity! If dreams are not the mirrors of the past,They sometimes do forerun realities;And ere the day, white in the orient then,Folded with stripéd wings the evening star,The lord of Tepechan had taken his mace,And sadly the fair maiden, in his shield,Was weaving-feathers for the field of war.And if the king had any troubling thoughtOf the old love, awakened by the new, He said, 'T was pity it had ever been—Unequal loves were never prosperous:Yet it was scarcely love—the chance capriceOf hours of indolence—by TläaraDoubtless forgotten, for the self-same moonsHad filled and faded over her and him;That woman's heart at best was like the streamWhich in its bosom fondly takes the flowers,Sown idly on its margin by the winds,Or palely simple, or of gorgeous pride;And even if some chance wave of her lifeHad closely held his image for a while,The tender pallor of her transient grief,Under the summer's golden rustleing,Had long flushed back to beauty. But at worst,Say that she loved, and of desertion died,Why, thousands, perished in the wars, were ne'erWith pious tears lamented: and his realmHad right to claim a princess for its queen;And if long centuries of joyance sprung,And flourished, from one little profitless life,Who would dare call the sacrifice unjust?And thus he laid the ghost of memory.So like a very truth a lie may seemI think the elect might almost be deceived.Love, that warm passion-flower of the heart,Nursed into bloom and beauty by a breath,Even on the utmost verge of human lifeDims the great splendor of eternity.Trug, some have trodden it beneath their feet. Led by that bright curse, Genius, and have goneOn the broad wake of visions wonderful,And seemed, to the dull mortals far below,Unravelling the web of fate, at will,And leaning on their own creative power,Defiant of its beauty: but, alas!Along the climbing of their wildering way,Many have faltered, fallen—some have died,Still wooing, from across the lapse of years,The roseate blushing of its virgin pride,And feeding sorrow with its faded bloom;For not the almost-omnipotence of mindCan from its aching bind the bleeding heart,Or keep at will its mighty sorrow down.Our mortal needs ask mortal ministries,And o'er the lilies in the crown of heaven,Even in ruins, love's earth-growing flower,While we are earthy, showeth eminent. When the calm beating of the pulse of timeThat keeps right on, nor for our joys or griefsQuickens or flags, had measured years, unblestOr bright, as fate their passage made,Hualco's fair and gentle servitor,Faithless and recreant to the veteran chief,Within the folding arms of royaltySheltered the blushing of her crownéd brows.And Tläara! Ah, could they only feel,Who are the ministers of ill to us,That we are hungry while they keep their feasts;That in our hearts the blood is warm and bright, Though our cheeks shrivel, and our feeble stepsCrack up the harvestless ridges where we starve!—For desolate, wronged Tläara, was leftOnly the wretched change of misery.The imperial triumphs sounded through the hills,With undertones of the perpetual songsOf gayety, and splendor, and delights,Or, right or wrong, that most in palacesHave had dominion from the earliest timeAnd she as one doomed, innocent, to death,Fast in the shadows of his columns chained,Saw her brief visions faded to the huesOf fixed and damnable realities.Night had shut up her little day of loveWith all its leafy whispers; in her skyThe sunset like a wivern winged with fireHad burned the flowery thickets of the cloudsAnd left them black and lonesome, and, like eyesIn the wide front of some dead beast, the stars,Filmy and blank, stared on her out of heaven.I said she knew the change of misery,The pain but not the glory of the crewOf rebel angels, whose undying prideLike a bruised serpent towers against their doom,Even while their webbed and flabby wings, once bright,Lie wrinkling, flat, on waves of liquid fire. Sometimes she told the unbetraying ghostsOf her dead joys—the story of her life,Portraying, phase by phase, from love to hate:"The day," she said, "was over: on the hills The parting light was flitting like a ghost;And like a trembling lover eve's sweet star,In the dim leafy reach of the thick woods,Stood waiting for the coming down of night.But it was not the beauty of the timeThat thrilled my heart with tempests of such joysAs shake the bosom of a god, new-winged,When first in his blue pathway up the skies,He feels the embrace of immortality.A moment's bliss, and then the world was changed—Truth, like a planet striking through the dark,Shone clear and cold, and I was what I am,Listening along the wilderness of lifeFor the faint echoes of lost melody.The moonlight gathered itself back from me,And slanted its pale pinions to the dust;The drowsy gust, bedded in luscious blooms,Startled, as at the death-throes of all peace,Down through the darkness moaningly fled off.God, hide from me the time! for then I knewHualco's shame of me, a low-born maid.I could, I think, have lifted up my hands,Though bandaged back with grave-clothes; in that hour,To cover my hot forehead from his kiss.And yet, false love! I loved thee—listening closeFrom the dim hour when twilight's rosy hedgeSprang from the field of sunset, till deep nightSwept with her cloud of stars the face of heaven,For the quick music of thy hurrying step.And if, within some cold and sunless cave Thou hadst lain lost and dying, prompted not,My feet had struck that pathway, and I could,With the neglected sunshine of my hair,Thence clasped thee from the hungry jaws of death,And on my heart, as on a wave of light,Have lulled thee to the beauty of soft dreams. "Weak, womanish imaginings, begone!Let the poor-spirited children of despairHang on the sepulchre of buried hopeThe fiery garlands of their love-lorn songs.Though such gift turnéd on its pearly hingeSweet Mercy's gate, I would not so debase me.Shut out from heaven and all the blessed saints,I, from the arch-fiend's wing, as from a star,Would gather yet some splendor to my brows,And tread the darkness with a step of pride.For what is love? a pretty transiency,An unsubstantial cheat, which for a whileMakes glad the commonest way, but like the dewWhich sunbeams reach and take from us, it fades—Our very smiles do dry and wither it.What is 't to leave the washing of my cheeksOut of its flower-cups, and go mateless onAcross the ages to eternity?Farewell, my prince, my king, a last farewell!My love is all for fame, and from this hourAgainst my bosom with a fonder claspThan ever given to thee, I treasure it.Thy queen is fair—I give thee joy of her,And in the shadow of thy royal state Stoop low my knee to say I do not hate her;She has no measure in herself wherewithTo gauge my nature; she is powerlessTo lift her littleness into my scorn;No thought of hers outreaches a plume's length—If any time I cross or tread on her,'T is that I see her not more than the wormKnotting itself for anger at my feet—My feet, now planted on the burnt, bare rocks,Under whose bloodless ribs the river of deathRuns black with mortal sorrow. Vex me notWith your low love; my heart is mated withThe steadfast splendor of the world of fame,What care have I for daisies or for dew,The quail's wild whistle or the robin's song,Or childhood's prattlings, sweeter though they beThan rainy meadows, blue with violets?The walls built firm against the massy heightsThat stay me up so well, are seamed with gold,Sparkling like broken granite, and green stalksRun up the unfrequent paths, lifting their bloomsInto the long still sunshine, where no changeShall ever earth them up. It is in vainYe tempt me from my steady footing backTo the dim level of mortality.What! think you I would leave this pain-bought placeFor Love's soft beckoning? Nay, ye know me not.Though the wild stormy North with fretful wingsFlew at my fastness till it toppled hardAgainst hell's hollow bosom, even then Rocked like the cradle of a baby-god,I would not yield my glory a hair's breadth,But gathering courage like a mantle up,Would smile betwixt the harmless thunderbolts." So, with a thousand idle vagaries,She cooled the fire, slow-burning out her life;And when the fit was gone, there came remorse,And she would say, "Forgive me, piteous gods!I had a maddening fever in my brainThat made me turn the thorny point of hateWhich should have been bent sharpest on myself,Against the heart of my sweet lord, the king.Nay, wherefore should I ask to be forgiven?A maniac's bitter raving is not prayer—That is a hope, concentrate and sincere,That reaches up to heaven; words that are liptBy the anointed priesthood, day by day,May need more to be prayed for than the curseOf a profane, unmeditative mood. "Mine! he is all mine! she may bear his name.Or in the golden shadows of his crownStrut a brief day; more, call herself his wife,If that a sound can give her any joy;But if, from the close foldings of my heart,She can undo his love and make it hers,And me forgotten—then she has more skillThan any woman here in Tlascala.In some green leafy closet of the woodsI will go fast, till that the maiden moon,Walking serene above her worshippers, With some cold angry shaft shall strike me dead.My cunning soul shall free my body yetFrom these wild wasting pains, and from the scornOf that bad woman whose most wicked wilesHave wronged the excellent king, and me have wronged.But that is nothing: why should I have saidThat I had any harms? they all are his.Else will I go into some ugly caveWhere vipers lodge, and choke them till they stingAnd make me but a spirit. I will buildA palace with a window toward the earth,And train white flowers—my lord loves best white flowers—And if there be a language more divineThan love knows here, I'll learn it, though it takeHalf the long ages of eternity." There came into the groves of TlascalaAn old man from the wars, where he had wornCommands and victories, and won such fameThat with the names of gods his, intertwined,Was seen in temples, yet by some great painSo bowed that even the basest pitied him;And he, to soothe her grief with other grief,Recited all the story of his life:How a king's hands unlocked from his gray hairsThe claspéd arms of tenderness, and struckHis bright hopes into ruins, so that lifeHad lingered on, a sorrowful lament,Waking no piteous echo but the grave's."But thou," he said, "fair maiden, thou and I— Complainings ill befit the sunset timeThat folds earth's shadow, like a poison flower,And leaves life's last waves brokenly alongThe unknown borders of eternity.'T is an extremity that warns us backFrom staggering on, alas! we know not what.With hatred's damning seal upon our souls,How shall we ask for mercy? Shall the godsForgive the unforgiving? or sweet PeaceThe red complexion of the scorner's cheekFold to her quiet bosom? Nay, my child,We have not in the world an enemyBad as that pride, which sets its devil strengthAgainst the grave, the gods, and everything." Then she who was so meekly calm before,Half rising out of death, as if that pleaTightened the coil of wo about her heart,Answered, "What demon comes to torture me?Forgive! The word sounds well enough, in sooth;But say it to the tigress, when she licksTheir streaky beauty from the smoking bloodThat drenches her dead cubs: and will she fawn,And her fierce eyes grow meekly sorrowful,And her dilated nostril in the dustCower humbly at your feet? I tell you, no!—That is a word for injury to useIn penitent supplication; not for her,Whose heartstrings quiver in the torturer's hand.I know no use for it; nor gods nor men,Require of us forgiveness of a foe Till his true grief give warranty to usThat the forgiven may be trusted too.Dying! thou sayest I'm dying! yes, 'tis true!I feel the tide outflowing!—and for thisShall I in womanish weakness falter out,'See, piteous gods! how I forgive this man,And lovingly kiss his murderous hand, withal,And so, sweet Homeyoca, rest my soul!'Urge me no longer! in the close, cold graveThe heart is done with aching, and the eyesAre troubled with love's changes never more.The palace splendors cannot reach me there,Nor pipes nor dances wake my heavy sleep—The dead are safe. Look, friend, is that the dayBreaking so white along the cloudy east?Not since the fading of my lovelit dreamHave I beheld a light so heavenly.Nature seems all astir; the tree-tops moveAs with birds going through them, and the dewsHang burning, lamp-like, thick among the leaves.All the long year past I have risen betimes,For sake of morning purples and rich heapsOf red-brown broideries—shaping in my thoughtThe gorgeous chamber of a queen, the whileI penned my goats for milking; but till now,The sunstreaks have run glistering, round the rocks,Or doubled up the clouds like snakes, dislodged.Once I remember, when I staid, alone,Hunting along the woods—my playfellowsGone homeward, dragging cherry-boughs and grapes— A brooding splendor, large about me shone,As if the queen moon met me in my way,And in her white hands held me for an hour.That night my mossy bed was covered brightWith skins of ounces; drowsing into sleep,I heard the simples simmering at the fire;Heard my scared housemates whispering each to eachThat I was marked and singled out for harm.Like buds that sprout together on one bough,Brightening one window, so we grew and bloomed—I and those merry children; some are goneTo the last refuge—some contented stayAlong the valleys where the hedgerows keepThe summer grass bright longest. When we playedOn hill or meadow, oft I left the sportsTo climb the rough bare sea-cliffs; when we sungI mocked the screaming eagle; when we soughtFlowers for our pastimes, I was sure to bringThe brightest and most deadly—'t was the bentOf my audacious nature. Like the dove,That foulish sits upon the serpent's eggs,Nor, till she feels beneath her pretty wingsThe stirring of the cold white-bellied brood,Flies to the shelter of her proper home,So has it been with me; soft, I untiedThe hands that set the pitfall. I am down,Yet proud Hualco, girt in armor, fearsTo leap into the dark with me, and takeThe embrace of my weak arms. Erect and freeHe dare not mock me, fallen and in bonds; For who would tempt the hungry lionessWith the fresh look of blood? Though I were dead,If he were near, my stagnant life would stir,And I would close upon immortal powerTo crack the close grave open and come up,To scare him whiter than his marriage bed.It cannot be, if justice be alive,That he shall hover, ghoul-like, round my corse,And blight the simple flowers I change into;It cannot be that the great lidless eyeOf Truth will never stare into his heart,And search its sinful secrets, withering offThe leprous scales of perjury whereinThey are peeled up. "Ye hated, monstrous things,Whose trade is torment, in your troughs of fireRock idly, drawing back your ugly headsInto their proper caverns: no sharp toothWounds like the stinging of a conscience roused!Leave him to that: he cannot 'scape it long.I pray no mercy; beyond mortal strengthMen may be tempted—I am human, too.If, thirsting in a desert, one draw nearWith golden cups of water in his hands,How hardly do we fill our mouths with dust;If fever parch us, pleasant is the dewOf kisses dropping cold against the cheek;And brows like mine that the wild rains have wet,Take kindly to the shelter of a crown.Plead with me as you will: since love is lost, I have small care for any blackest stormThat e'er may mock my gray unhonored hairs.Life's unlinked chains, in the quick opening grave,May rust together—this is ail my hope.I scorn thee not, old man! no haunting ghost,Born of the darkness of love's perjury,Crosses the white tent of thy dreaming now;And if thy palsy-shaken years, or death,Move thee, in solacing confessional,To register forgiveness of all foes—I speak not now, my friend, to keep thee back,But, for myself—I tell thee, I have loved,More than I have the gods, this faithless king;And feeling that for this my doom was sealed,Have I in sorrow cried unto the saved,'From the high walls of Mercy lean sometimes,And, parting the thick clouds that roof the lost,Give me the comfort of some blessed signThat tells me he is happy.' That is passed!Pray, if thou wilt—my lips are dumb of prayer." Struck with the lovely ruin, ebbing lifeSent for a moment its live currents back,Swelling his shrunken veins to knotty blue;And a faint hope illumined his old eyes,As if the sea of anguish lost a wave;And kneeling humbly at her feet, he said—"Ye gods! reach lovingly across the graveTo the great sorrow of this death-winged prayer,And for its sake about this sweet soul wrapBlest immortality! be piteous, Heaven, For she is murdered by inconstancy!Bend softly low, and hear her cruel wrongsPlead for her who will plead not for herself. "I had a wound erewhile, and now, alas!It bleeds afresh to see her die so proud;Yet doth she make pride beautiful, and liesDrowsing to death in its majestic light,Like a bee sleeping in a golden flower.The hot salt waters brim up to my eyes,To think of her, so fit for life's delights,Buried down low in the brown heavy earth,Where the rude beast may tread and nettles grow.I have seen death in many a fearful form,For I have been a soldier all my life;Have pillowed on my breast a thousand timesSome comrade in his last extremity;But now my heart, unused to such a strait,Plays the weak woman with me. Fighting onceIn the thick front of battle, I beheldOur grim foe open wide his red-leaved book;I felt his cold hand touch me; saw him fixHis filmy eyes and write, I thought, my name;Yet I was calm, and laying down my lance,Sought to embrace him as a soldier should.I was young then, and fair luxuriant locksHung thick about my brows; life had no chanceI feared to combat with a single hand;Now I am better spared—old and unfitFor wars or gamesome pastimes—but have lostThe sweet grace of a brave surrendering. Oh, I have scarce a minute more to live;I feel the breaking up of human scenes;Time, block your swiftly moving wheels, I pray,And make delay, for pity; Evening, keepYour blushing cheek under the sun awhile,And give my gray hairs one repentant hour!My vision cannot fix you, my sweet child;Undo my helm, and lay it with my bow—Nay—'t is no matter—lay it anywhere.So, sit and sing for me some mournful song,And I will grow immortal, in the dreamThat you are that most fair and gentle maidWho tended once the chief of Tepechan." I know not if 'tis true, they often sayOf this intenser action of the mind,That it is madness: she of whom I sing,Lost, loving Tlaära, in realms apartFrom joy or sorrow, made herself a world,Nor sight she saw nor sound she heard they knewWho followed, pitying, all her wayward steps,Or added wonder at her strange wild words. One sunny summer day in Tlascala,Midway from its warm fields to where its peak,That slept in snows eternal, calmly shone,She from a mountain gazed, as set the sun,Down on the mightiest and the loveliest landIn history seen or in prophetic dreams.But not Tezcuco Chalco, Xalcotan,Upon whose waves gay moved the fisher's boats,Nor towers, nor temples, nor fair palaces, Nor groves that rose in green magnificence,One glance could win from her far-looking eyes.In natural music died the beautiful day,Grew black the bases of the terraced hills,And their mid regions, of a slumberous blue,Faded to roseate silver toward the skies,Along whose even field the hornéd moonWalked, turning golden furrows on the clouds.At last was set the night's most dark eclipse,And yet she saw or seemed to see ariseTezcuco's capital, within whose wallsWhat maddening scenes her jealous fancy drew! The midnight passed, and lifting up her eyes,From that long vigil, she beheld afarThe awful burning of volcanic fires,Which seemed as if had fled ten thousand starsFrom all their orbits, leaving heaven in gloom,Save where they crashed in terrible fire alone,Crashed in tumultuous rage; as if each one,Fearful of Night, claimed the most central heats.She saw unmoved, for now was left no moreOr fear or hope—the ultimate secret readOf that too common but dread history.She only said, how calmly! "The slim reedThat grows beside the most untravelled road,With its wild blossoms yet may bless the eyes.Of some chance pilgrim; over the dead treeMosses run bright together; in the hedgeThe prickles of the thistle's bluish leavesHold, all day, spike-like, shining globes of dew; Even from the stonyest crevice, some stray thornMay crook its knotty body toward the sun.And give the ant-hill shelter, but my deathWill desolate no homely spot of earth.No eyes, when I am gone, will seek the ground;No voice will falter, when the flowers come up—'If she were only with us! such a timeWe were so blest together.' I would leave,(My frailty and my follies all forgot)A pleasant memory somewhere. As we lookWith pining eyes upon the faded year,Forgetful of the vexing winds, that tookThe green tops of the woods down; picking bareThe limbs of shining berries and gay leaves—So would I leave some friend to think of me.The wild bird, when its mate dies, stays for grief,Sad, under lonesome briers; but, mateless, IFall like a pillar of the desert dust,Struck from its barren drifting in the waste—No twig left wilting, with its root unearthed,White bleaching in the sun—no insect's wing,Trembling, uncertain for its lighting, lost.Like to the star that in night's black abysmTrails itself out in light, the human heartWastes all its life in love—that sacrificeThe consummation of diviner blissThan he can feel, who, looking from a dreamSees palpable, his soul's unchambered thoughtsMoving along the ages; calm and bright,Like mighty wings, spread level. It is well Earth's fair things fade so soon, else for their sakeMortals would slip from their eternity,And pleased, go downward from the hills of heaven,Hurtled to death like beasts; nay, even they,Decked for the shambles, impotently shakeThe flowers about their foreheads—madly wise.Oh, Love, thou art almost omnipotent!Thy beauty, more than faith or hope, at last,Lights the black offing of the noiseless sea.'T is hard to leave thy sweetest companyAnd turn our steps into the dark, alone;If he were waiting for me I could passDeath and the grave—yea, hell itself, unharmed.In the gray branches of the starlit oaks,I hear the heavy murmurs of the winds,Like the low plaints of evil spirits, heldBy drear enchantments from their demon mates.Another night-time, and I shall have foundA refuge from their mournful prophecies." Then, as if seeing forms none else could see,With deepening melancholy in each word,She said, "Come near, and from my forehead smoothThese long and heavy tresses, still as brightAs when their wave of beauty bathed the handThat unto death betrayed me. Nay, 'tis well!I pray you do not weep; no other fateWere half so fitting for me. On the graveLight, from the open gate of Peace, is laid,And Faith leans yearningly away to heaven;But life hath glooms wherein no light may come. There, now I think I have no further need—For unto all, at last, there comes a timeWhen no sweet care can do us any good!Not in my life that I remember of,Could my neglect have injured any one,And if I have, by my officious love,Thrown harmful shadows in the way of some,Be piteous to my natural weaknesses—I never shall offend you any more! "And now, most melancholy messenger,Touch mine eyes gently with Sleep's heavy dew;I have no wish to struggle from thy arms,Nor is there any hand would hold me back.The night is very dismal, yet I see,Over yon hill, one bright and steady starDivide the darkness with its fiery spear,And sprinkle glory-on the lap of earth,And the winds take the sounds of lullabies.Fretful of present fortune are we all,Still to be blest to-morrow; through the boughsMurmurous and cool with shadows, we reach outOur naked arms, and when the noontide heatConsumes us, talk of chance, and fate.Even from the lap of Love we lean awayLike a sick child from a kind nurse's arms,And petulantly tease for any toyA hand-breadth out of reach; and from the wayWhere hedge and harvest blend, irregular,Their bordering of green and gold, we turnAnd climb up ledges rough and verdureless. And when our feet, through weariness and toil,Have gained the heights that showed so brightly well,Our blind and dizzied vision sees, too late,The forks of thickets running in and outWooing the silence with a silver tongue,And then our feeble hands let slip the staff,That helpt our fruitless journey, and our cheeksShrivel from smiles and roses; so our sunGoes, clouded down, and to the young bold race,Close treading in our footsteps, we are dust.Thus ends the last delusion; well—'tis well." A moment, and as some rough wind that sweepsThe sunshine from the summer, o'er her faceCame the chill shadow, and her grief was done.Maidens, whose kindling blushes softly burnThrough nut-brown locks, or golden, garlanded,Bright for the bridal, take with gentlest hands,Out of your Eden, any simple flowers,And cover her pale corse from cruel scorn,Who, claiming in your joy no sisterhood,Took in her arms the darkness which is peace;And that the bright-winged ministers of GodShall, when she wakes in beauty out of dust,Make kindly restoration, pray sometimes. And when that she was dead and in her grave,A blaming and a mourning melancholy,Sweetly commending all her buried grace,Darkened the pleasant chambers of the king,Till in the ceremony of his prayers, Often he stopt, for "amen" crying out,"Oh, Tläara! best, gentlest Tläara!"Yet pain had still vicissitudes of peace,Until Remorse, with lean and famished lips,Hung sucking at his heart; then came Despair,And, from his greatness sorrowfully bowed—Like to that feathered serpent,[29] that of oldWent writhing down the blue air, weak and bruisedTo hide beneath the sea the emerald rings.Erewhile uncoiled along the level heavens—Went he from splendor to the deeps of wo.No white dove, rustling back the darkness, came,Raining out lovely music from its wingsUpon his troubled soul, as once there cameTo Colhua's mountain children; he was changed—Not in his princely presence; not like him,Who, fasting in the mount of penitence,Fell in temptation, and was so transformedTo a black scorpion; but his youth of heartDropt off, as from the girdled sapling dropsThe unripe fruitage; hope was done with him.With calm, deliberative eyes, he lookedUpon the kingdoms, parceled at his will;Over his harvests saw the sun go down,As though his rising on the morrow broughtThe issue of a battle; as one lost,Who, by the tracks of beasts would find his wayTo human habitations, so he strayedFarther and farther from the rest he sought. From the sweet altar where the lamp of loveBurned through the temple's twilight, his sad stepsThenceforward turned aside, and entered inThat dreadful fane, reared sacredly to himOf the four arrows and blue twisted club,Whose waist is girdled with a golden snake,While round his neck a collar of human heartsHangs in dread token of his murderous trade.The green-robed goddess of the fiery wandThat on the manta's fleeces rides at nightAcross the sea-waves, beckoned him sometimes,And he would fain have gone, but that a handLike that which she of Katelolco heldBack from the river of Death what time she heardThe dead bones making prophecies of war,Still held him among mortals; but he saw,Lovely as life and habited in snowNo youth upon whose forehead shone the cross,Such as to that pale sleeper gave the powerTo lift the cold stone of her sepulchreAnd bear her mournful warning to the world.For his soul's peace he built a rocky bowerAnd dwelt in banishment perpetual;Wronging his marriage-bed, for solitude,Uncomforting and barren. When the morn,Planting carnations in the hilly east,Peeped smiling o'er the shoulder of the day,He set his joined hands before his eyes,Sighing as one who sees, or thinks he sees,The likeness of a friend, untimely dead. Nightly he watched the great unstable seaKneel on the brown bare sand and lay his faceIn the green lap of Earth—his paramour—And sobbing, kiss her to forgiving terms,Then straightway, cruel and incontinent,Go from her—tracking after the white moon;Music constrained its sweetest melodiesTo please his lonesome listening—all in vain;Beauty grew hateful, and the voice of love,Shrill as the sullen bickering of the storm,Close-neighboring his rocky prison-house.Under the vaulted ceiling of a tower,Bright with all fragrant woods and shining stones.Dwelt priests, in the dim incense, whose clay pipesAnd rosy jangling shells, mixing with hymns,Told to their melancholy king what timesTo give his homage to the Invisible.But from the darkening wake of his lost love,The wild and desolate echoes evermoreWent crying to the pitying arms of God;And the crushed strings of his complaining lyreUnder the kissing hands of poesyThrilled never with such sweetness, as erewhile,Beneath the bloomy boughs of Tlascala.
- ↑ The ancient MSS. of the Mexicans were for the most part on a fine fabric made of leaves of the aloe. It resembled the Egyptian papyrus, and was more soft and beautiful than parchment. The written leaves were commonly done up in volumes.—Prescott.
- ↑ On the termination of the great cycle of fifty years, says Prescott, there was celebrated a remarkable festival. The cycle would end in the latter part of December, and as the dreary season of the winter solstice approached, and the diminished light of day gave melancholy presage of its quick extinction, their apprehensions increased; and as the last days arrived, they abandoned themselves to despair. The holy fires were suffered to go out in their temples, and none were lighted in their dwellings. Everything was thrown into disorder, for the coming of the evil genii, who were to descend on, and desolate the earth. On the evening of the last day a procession of priests moved toward a lofty mountain, two leagues from the city. On reaching its summit. the procession paused till midnight, when, as the constellation of the Pleiades approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled on the wounded breast of the victim. Southey describes the scene, in Madoc:
"On his bare breast the cedar boughs are laid;On his bare breast dry sedge and odorous gumsLaid ready to receive the sacred spark,And herald the ascending Sun,Upon his living altar."
The flame was soon communicated to a funeral pile, on which the body of the slaughtered captive was thrown; and as the light streamed toward heaven, shouts of joy and triumph burst from the countless multitudes. Thirteen days were given up to festivity. It was the national jubilee of the Aztecs, like that of the Romans or Etruscans, which few alive had seen before, or could expect to see again.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Pojahtecate.
- ↑ The general name by which, according to Lord Kingsborough, the deity was known to the Mexicans.
- ↑ Maxtala, Maxtlaton, or Maxtla, was successor of the Tepanec conqueror, and his tyranny was evinced first against the son of the defeated and slain sovereign, whom he made an exile and a fugitive.
- ↑ Called afterwards by the Spaniards, Sierra Neveda.
- ↑ Quetzalcoatl, god of the air, who visited the earth to instruct the people in the arts of civilization. Incurring the wrath of one of the principal gods, he was compelled to abandon the country, and as he went toward the sea, he stopped at Cholula, where a temple was dedicated to his worship, of which there are still gigantic ruins, regarded as among the most interesting relics of Mexican antiquity. On the shores of the gulf he took leave of his followers, entered his wizzard skiff of serpent skins, and embarking for Tlapalan, was never heard of again. He was large and fair, with long black hair and a flowing beard. See Prescott, and all the Spanish writers who have written of the Mexican mythology.
- ↑ The ocotochtli, of whom this fable is related by Hernandez.
- ↑ The sea-lion.
- ↑ "Dragon's Blood" runs from a large tree growing in the mountains of Quachinanco and those of the Cubuixcas.—Clavigero.
- ↑ The Mexican lion.
- ↑ Clavigero, i. 124, presents the curious details of the sacrifice and deification of this princess.
- ↑ The wolf.
- ↑ The imperial families of Tezuco and Mexico were at this period allied, and the young prince found a temporary refuge within the palaces of his relations.
- ↑ These events occurred, according to Ixtilxochitl, in 1418.
- ↑ Not long after his flight from the field on which his father had been slain, the prince fell into the hands of his enemy, was borne off in triumph to his eity, and thrown into a dungeon. He effected his escape. however, through the connivance of the governor of the fortress, a servant of his family, who took the place of the royal fugitive, and paid for his loyalty with his life.—Prescott.
- ↑ Neza-hualco-yotl, Clavigero says, excelled in poetry, and produced many compositions, which met with universal applause. In the sixteenth century, his sixty hymns, composed in honor of the Creator of heaven, were celebrated even among the Spaniards. Two of his odes or songs, translated into Spanish verse by his descendant, the historian Ixtlilxochitl, have been preserved into our time; and Mr. Prescott has given us prose and lyrical versions of one of them, in his Conquest of Mexico.
- ↑ The prince sought a retreat in the mountainous and woody district by the borders of Tlascala, and there led a wandering life, hiding himself in deep thickets and caverns, and stealing out at night to satisfy the cravings of appetite; while kept in constant alarm by the activity of pursuers, always hovering on his track. On one occasion, says Prescott, he was just able to turn the crest of a hill, as they were climbing it on the other side, when he fell in with a girl who was reaping chian; he persuaded her to cover him up with the stocks she had been cutting; and when his pursuers came up and inquired if she had seen the fugitive, the girl coolly answered that she had, and pointed out a path as the one he had taken.
- ↑ It is curious that the cross should have been regarded as an object of religious worship where the light of Christianity had never risen. See Peter Martyr's Decads, as quoted by Lord Kingsborough, in his Antiquities of Mexico.
- ↑ For an account of the remarkable fasts kept, solitary, in the forests. by the Mexican priests, in times of extraordinary calamity, see Clavigero, i. 236.
- ↑ "Let us go."—Clavigero, i. 112.
- ↑ Tolpicin the first Mexican king, it was believed, was changed into Venas, the Morning Star, to which a slave was sacrificed on its first appearance in every autumn.—Lord Kingsborough.
- ↑ Lord Kingsborough, vi. 179.
- ↑ A serpent that in the dark shines like a glow-worm.
- ↑ When first going to war, young men were dressed in a simple costume of white.—Clavigero, i. 365.
- ↑ Before a storm, these birds are often seen flying in vast numbers, high under the loftiest clouds.
- ↑ He dedicated his temples, says Prescott, to the Unknown God—the Cause of Causes.
- ↑ This curious history, so similar to that of David and Uriah, is related by Prescott.
- ↑ Quetzalcoatl, the god of air.