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 tomb
Sat the young Day, new-risen; at her feet,
Wrapt loose together, lay the burial clouds;
And on her forehead, like the unsteady crown
Of 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 corn
Pressed to her bosom, lessening, down the west;
And thou, dusk huntress! through whose heavy locks
Shimmer the icy arrows of the stars—
About whose solemn brow once blinded Faith
Wound 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 wave
Waded 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 path
The ocelot drew back, and in her lair
Growled 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 Xalapa
Lifted its limber folds into the light.
From his black cirque of rocks, stood up alone
The monarch of the mountains;[3] his breast,
The fiery foldings of his garment, bracked
And 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 lay
Twining 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 pines
Shook their thick limbs together, as the winds
Toiled past them toward the red gaps of the hills,
Through which the Morning came, and, where, for hours
Tanning her cheeks with kisses, they would stay.
But to the hopeless heaven itself were sad:
The darkened senses fail to apprehend
The elements of beauty; the dull gaze
Is introverted to the world within,
Whose all is ruins—seeing never more
The all-serene and blessed harmony
That lives and breathes through Nature: to the air
Giving its motion and its melody,
The trees their separate colors, the wild brooks
Their silver syllables, 'gainst fruitless stones
Joining bright grasses, knitting goldenly
The clear white of the day's departing train
Into the blank, black border of the night,
Dew raining on the dust, and on the heart
The 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 shrine
Reared by the priests of Hometeuli,[4] long
Gone down in still processions to the dark,
Lay fallen Hualco—his unmailèd arms
Prostrate along the dust, while, like live coals,
His eyes, no longer shadowed by a crown,
Deep in their blue and famine-sunken rings
Burned 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 sun
In broken flutterings to keep its hold
Up level with the mountains, more sublime
Than 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 power
That rounds the ambitious aims of selfishness:
His broken people he would fain have built
Into a mighty column, that should stand,
The beacon of the unborn centuries;
From the blind statues where Idolatry
Sunk 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 face
Now with the piteous pallor of despair
Was overspread, and now was all transformed
Into the stormy beauty of roused hate.
Such change is seen when o'er some buried fire
The gust shoves heavy, and the quickened sparks
Burn red together in the ashen ground.
Fragments of temples, sacred to the rites
Of 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 skins
Dragged, as he sailed for fabulous Tlapalan.
A prince, and yet a dweller in the woods
So long, that in his path the fiercest wolves
Walked tame as with their mates, and o'er his head
Howled that strange beast[8] that to his fellows cries
Till they devour the feast himself tastes not;
And flying rats gnawed their repasts, hard by,
From tawny barks of oily trees, or made
With 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 same
Whether 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 trees
Spread over him their cool and tent-like shade,
And pillows of the ceiba down lay white
Upon on his bed of moss, or whether hot
And sharp against his face, its iron leaves
The mirapanda thrust: To husk the sheathes
From the sweet fruitage of the plant of light,
Or, starved, to climb the rugged steeps wherein
The shelves of unsunned stone were folded full
Of slimy lodgers, were to him as one.
A bright bud, broken from a royal tree
And planted-in the desert, how shall I
Sing his strange story fitly, and so make
A new moon in the sky of poesy?
The bards of fair Tezcuco long ago
Won from the mountains where he hid, forlorn,
Treasures of beauty shining still along
The dreary ways poetic pilgrims go,
Like fountains roofed with rainbows—making all
His wrongs and toils, in cloudy exile borne,
The brief eclipse of the most glorious day
That ever shone along the Aztec hills.
While in the broidery of a baby king
Yet swathed, unconscious, all the lovely maids
From Actolan to Champala had come,
And from their girdles loosening the pearls
And 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 hung
About the empire's neck. Ill-fated prince!
When the glad music sounding at his birth
Was 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 see
The purposes God puts about our wo,
Behind the plowing storm run shining waves,
Like beetles through new furrows; the same hand
That peels the tough husk of the chrysalis,
Gives it its double wings to fly withal;
The rain that makes the wren sail heavily
Sets on the millet stocks their golden tops:
And earthly immortality is bought
At 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 earth
The seed must be imprisoned, ere to lif
It quicken and sprout brightly; the sharp stroke
Brings from the flint its fiery property;
And that we call misfortune, to the wise
Is a good minister, and knowledge brings:
And knowledge is the basis whereon power
Builds her eternal arches. In the dust
Of 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 leap
Nimbly from wave to wave along the sea,
Enchanting with sweet tongues disastrous ships
Till the rough crews are half in love with death,
Have any spell of evil witchery
To 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 hands
Sow 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 mock
To preach to us repentance and belief.
Sweet saints I pray in piteous love agree,
And from the ugly bosom of despair
Draw back the nestling hand-heal the vexed heart
And steady it what time the faltering faith
Keeps its own council with determinate Will,
The hardy pioneer of all success.
"Among the ruins of my rightful hopes
Shall I crouch down and say I am content?
It is not in my nature. I would scorn
The weakness of submission, though to that
Life's miserable chance were narrowed up.
Shame to the wearer of a beard who wears
No manhood with it; double shame to him
Whose plaything is the fillet of a crown.
Even beasts whose lower senses are shut in
From purposes of reason, have maintained
A lordly disposition; taming not
To the sleek touches of the keeper's hand.
The uses of humility are till
For underlings and women—not for kings.
And yet to fate, if there be any fate,
Even the gods must yield; they cannot make
The 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, essay
To bend the untempered iron of destiny
About my forehead? 'T is most maddening,
The attempt and not the achievement—yet th' attempt
Is all the wedge that splits its knotty way
Betwixt the impossible and possible.
From the flat shrubless desert to the waves
Of 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 space
Its free wings fall back baffled. So it is
With gods and men: each have their atmospheres,
Which they are free to move in, and to which
From ampler quests, they needs must flounder down.
Sometimes, when goaded to the utmost verge
Of possible endurance—gathering all
My sorrows to one purpose, rebel like,
I would step out into the dark, when lo!
Fate ties my unwilling feet, and 'twixt my eyes
And the great Infinite, full in the sun
Makes quiet pictures. But ere I can shape
This chaos of crushed manhood that I am
To any purposes, the faithless light
Breaks up, and all is darkness as it was.
So are we crippled ever. Even like
The 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 overclimb
The steep high walls about us; now, alas!
Dragging back heavily into itself.
Like am I to a drowning man, whose hands
Hold idly to the unsubstantial waves;
Or like some dreamer, on whose conscious form
A wretched weight lies heavy, while his tongue
Refuses 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 limbs
Bound, 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 Power
Sweeps 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 darknesses
Where 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 dew
The gods dwell over us, and have they need
To buy our favor with some piteous sign?
Their bliss we cannot lessen nor increase.
But as we grow up to the topling heights
Of our ambitions, more and more we catch
Some dim reflection of their sovereignty.
The path is narrow that goes up, and on,
And Fame a jealous mistress. They who reach
To take her hand must let all others go.
"Borders and plaits of red and saphirine
Are pretty in the robe of royalty,
But to the drowning man, who strains against
The whelming waves, the gaud were cumbersome,
And straightway shredded off, and wet, wild rocks
Hugged to his bosom with a closer clasp
Than the young mother to her baby gives.
When from his steady footing hungry Death
Goes moaning back, the time has come to pluck
The 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 day
Dies, and is wrapt in purple like the rest.
Years run to waste, and age comes stealing slow
On our imperfect plans, till in our veins
The 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 howls
Crash through the shaken forest like a storm,
Would any beast divide his prey with him!
Or wild bird, in the flowing of his mane
Tangling 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 life
The 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 north
For me to breathe, with Maxtala alive!
Yet am I beggared, orphaned of all hope,
Herding with the coyotli,[13] while he reigns
The monarch of my palace; and the raids,
From Zalahua's shade to Tlascala,
Bend for his gracious favor till their locks
Flow 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 musical
That 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, Eve
Walks 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 power
Of all the gods, his wanton lip shall drink
The wine of wormwood. I will husk full soon
The 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 proves
The executioner's brief drawing off,
To strike betwixt the eyes—the sly recoil
Before the deadly spring—this, only this!"
On this wise spoke Hualco: otherwhiles,
The drowsy monotone of murmurous bees
Crept 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 heart
Gave all their sweetest comfort. As the bough
Drops 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 all
Have from her naked bosom drawn at times
Drafts sweet as crusted nectar.
Charily!
She gives us entertainment, if we come
With hearts unsanctified and noisy feet,
Into her tents of pious solitude.
But when we go in worshipful, she spreads
Her altars with the sacrament of peace,
And lifts into her solemn psalmody
Our spirits' else unuttered melodies.
'T is not the outward garniture of things
That 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 palm
That swung its odorous censers in the court,)
Texcuco's sovereign, who at bay had held
The trampling foe, tumultuous, which Tepan
Sent, with a robber thirst and barbarous strength,
To subjugate the fair land of the world—
More fair for courtesy than even the arts
Which reared its temples and its palaces;
Held them at bay, until his chiefs and legions,
Borne down like cornstocks in a whirlwind, lay
Along 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 delight
An unseen spirit plucked him, and his soul
Went 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 drop
In 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 heard
The plaining voice of one[16] who died for him,
Saying, "Hualco, let my wasted blood
Cement the broken beauty of thy throne,
And so shine evermore upon thine eyes
Like bright veins in the marble." He could see
His pleading innocence, thrust by tyranny,
Over the grave's steep edges, to the dark,
And all the train of lovelight, hitherto
Drawn after his firm footsteps, faded off
To 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 wood
Rest 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 told
How his quick shaft had blinded a huge beast
That 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 coo
To his pet tigress, penning her at night.
There was another picture, whose dark ground
No gleam of light illumined: hands, close-bound
From all the arrows, and the jetty locks
Clipt 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 misery
To that worst phase of all—the terrible sense
Of injury done, with utter impotence,
To lift the pallid forehead out of death,
And crown it with our sorrow.
I believe
Such griefs make many madmen, driving some
Into the lonesome wilderness, where all
That fine intelligence which shines intrenched
Fast in the mortal eyes of innocent men,
Throbs fitful through the film, obscured at last
To 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 mad
Such as do eat and die not; and where dwell
Shapes incomplete, with brows of pale misease,
That in the moon's infrequent glimmering
Run from their shadows, gibbering their fear;
Where earth seems from its beauteous uses worn
As with a slow eternity of pain—
Battered and worn, till no sweet grass can grow
Upon its old, scarred body, any more.
This was a grief indeed. No stabbing steel
Strikes 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 time
Were a nonentity—if such an act
Had been beforehand of celerity—
And such a pretty dalliance with chance
Pressed into service,—he had held secure
In his own hands, the destiny which now
Stood 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 be
Strung in the rosary of the love of God,
And flung about us mortals, there is none
Hath such divine excess of excellence
As that creative and mad faculty
Which 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 melodies
Crumble away to silence, and fade off.
Blest is the wanderer out of human love
Who hath been answered by this oracle.
What need hath he of the poor shows of power,
Who can charm angels out of heaven, and cross
Their 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 see
Will stoop above him, and between their palms
Press them out dry, or the wild breeze may stop
And blow them loosely open to the sun.
Widen no rings about your fires for him
Who catches the white mantles of the clouds,
And round his bosom in the chilly night
Gathers 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 ear
Fall in a softer music than on yours
The lovely prattle of your lisping babes:
For in his soul is a transforming power
By you unapprehended and unknown.
And he of whom I sing, shaping his wo
To the charmed syllables of poesy,[17]
Built visionary kingdoms, and recrowned
His naked brows out of the light of dreams.
Even as the white steeds of the desert keep
Before the clouds of hot and blinding sand,
Ran his wild visions forward of the truth.
Sometimes he sung of maidens, shut in towers
Of unhewn rocks, cold bowers of beauty, where
The moonlight blew across the beds of love
Tinged with the scarlet of the sacrifice;
Of the blue sky sometimes, or of the moon
Walking night's cloudy wilderness, as walks
The white doe through a jungle; of steep rocks
Burnt red and pastureless, where strings of goats
Climbed, hungry, to the rattle of picked bones
In the near eyry; sometimes of the hour
When in the sea of twilight the round sun
Sinks slow and sullen, and, one after one,
Circles of shadows crusted thick with stars
Come 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 hope
Dwell ever in the haunted house of Fear,
And even the God incarnate wept to see
The blanched and purposeless repose wherein
We 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 drowned
In storms of tears, and fell back on his heart,
As falls back to the earth the pretty moth
That flies into the rain—its wild wings drenched
From beauty to the color of the ground.
And the spring sprouted, and the summer smiled,
And day went darkly down, and morn came up
And ran between the mountains goldenly;
The wandering wasp shut up its thin blue wings,
Pricking the soft green bark of the capote
With 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 light
The 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 down
About his slumber-while the blessed dew
Sunk pearl-like 'twixt his long and uncombed locks.
For whether morn ran goldenly along
The mountain rifts, and with her kisses broke
The 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 trees
Ruffled their tops together, through the which
A 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 fringed
By 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 flax
Twisted to tangly wisps. Here, until now,
Spinning among the birds, a peasant's child,
With eyes poetic, tawny cheeks, and hair
Dark as a storm in winter, hath been used
To 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 weaves
The dark thread of her story with my song.
Ah, as she cuts the shining jointed stocks,
And packs them into heaps, tossing away
The heavy tresses from her stooping brow,
Little she deems their sable near to line
The 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 waves
Betwixt her horns, nor staggered, and so clomb
To fields of sweeter pasture. In the west;
A ridge of pines, that burnt themselves to flame
An hour ago, set their jagged tops
Black in th' horizon. Thence, suddenly,
Flitted a shape or shadow, and the feet
Of 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 woods
With undulating sweetness, as a cloud
Of yellow bees covers a limb of flowers—
Drinks eagerly the faintest sound of praise,
And the poor peasant was less firmly held
From quickly flying, by the hands that clung
To 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 wave
From their far tops, of splendor; then, as one
Whose 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 enough
To 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 once
Hugs 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 pit
Shakes the red shadow from her soul, and turns
To front the demon that has dragged her there—
Believe me, she is stronger than they all
Who dare not wait to listen!"
Oh, to such
Doubt not but that some piteous god will come,
Beauteously whitening down the blue of heaven,
And feed their souls with the blest sweetnesses
Drawn out of Mercy's everliving wells,
Till the air round them, with tumultuous joy
Hangs shivering like a wilderness of leaves,
And drifts of light run rippling through the clouds
Like 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 price
That 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 went
Misguided forward.[18] Such tumultuous joy
As filled her bosom only they may know
Who, 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 thatch
Of 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 all
At 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 love
The crowning nuptial; for old age, repose,
And for the worn and weary, kindly death
To make the all-composing lullaby.
But nothing in this low and ruined world
Rears the meek impress of the Son of God
So 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 abysm
A new-born star ope'd its gold-lidded eye,
And for a season in the depths of hell
Cooled 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 met
This 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 does
Shoals of dry, barren dust. Somewhere is wrong!
And night was past, and in the lap of day
The morning nestled, and yet other nights
Followed by other days had come and gone,
And the wild sorrow of the tempter's voice
Had dwarfed to utter silence, yet the maid
Had 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 laid
His crown upon her lap, for her sweet eyes,
And, for the zoning of her fond arms, gave
The 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 white
And 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 incomparable
To 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 cheek
Flushed out of olive, scarlet, and her heart
Drank in the essence of all happiness.
It was as if humanity attained
The stature of its immortality,
And earth were gathered up into the heavens.
For Love makes all things beautiful, and finds
No wilderness without its pleasure tent,
While Genius goes with melancholy steps
Searching the world for the selectest forms
Of high, and pure, and passionless excellence—
Large-browed, unmated Genius—yearning still
For the divinities which in its dreams
Brighten 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 goat
Stood 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 fair
Even alien fields; and if Hualco sighed,
She put a crown of kisses on his brow,
And drew him, with her smiling, from the thoughts
That wandered toward Tezcuco's palaces.
And for the vague, unfriendly fear, that made
His lessening love a possibility,
She gave into his hand the secretest key
Of her heart's treasury. Sometimes they walked
Between the moonbeams slanting up the hills,
In ways of shadow, edged with white cold light,
Or sat in solitudes where never sound
Fed the dumb lips of echo; but the flat
Of desertness, low lying, bare, and brown,
Their praises like a verdurous meadow drew,
And the black nettle and rude prickly burr
Challenged 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 glance
May 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 arms
The awful flames of martyrdom; but quick
The piteous flowing of her gentle tears
Dried, 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 brows
Under their hoods of thorns, low from the light,
As once the chieftain of the Aztec hosts
Heard 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 hear
The 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 star
Swam 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 hearts
For which at some time he hath not unloosed
The blushing binding of his nimble shafts.
Poor Tlaära forgot that ugly death
Burrowed in mortal soil, when that her lord
Kissed her, and called her "sweetest;" all her joy
Was basemented upon a smile of his;
And if he frowned, the sun shut up his light
Ah, Tlaära, thou dream'st; awake, be wise
Already the sleek, golden cub, erewhile
Fondled and hidden in thy bosom, growls.
As some poor spinner puts a little wool
Among her flax, to save the web from fire,
So she has tried to twist with her poor name
Some little splendor. Fate has baffled her;
But when the mists of tears shall clear away,
She may attain to such majestic heights
And atmospheres of glory as shut up
Life's lower planes, with all the murmurs made
O'er the death-fluttering of fledgling hopes—
All discords horrible, and rude complaints,
That rise, when at some direful exigence
Even 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 on
The smiling look of life, 't is wise to lay
The shroud about it, and so go again,
Among what joys are left, with decent calm.
When that which seemed the angel of our heaven
Shuts close its wings, and its white body shrinks
To a black, glistering coil, 't is little safe
To wait the growth of fangs. And when we find
That which, a little distant, seemed to us
The clambering of roses on the rocks,
To be the flag of pirates, shall we stay
Hugging the coast, and, dropping anchor, hunt
The 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 well
The obstinate traveller might in pride oppose
His puny shoulder to the icy slip
Of 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 tells
Her love off, even to the cross; and verily
In telling this, and telling only this,
Can they fill out her nature: so again
Come 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 hills
Sit 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 kiss
To give her, in the accustomed way, reply.
But there was silence at the first, and then
The 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 tears
Flowed faster than the blossoms from the bough
'Gainst which she leaned, despairing. A great wo
Crushes the fading of a century
Into 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 astir
The world grows young again. And Tlaära
Chid 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 brow
Sullen with sorrow and remorseless pain,
Talked to his troubled soul in this wild sort:
"So I am he, who in yet beardless years
Did 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 lie
Reaching into the vale of years, and still
A 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 feel
The tying of its hands. My brain must crack
Or I must slip the dusty leash I wear,
And run into the dark.
"See! the dead day
Drifts out in scarlet light, and the round moon
Whitens like day-break through the sullen clouds.
I scarce can see our cabin through the gaps
Of hills and woods, the night comes on so fast.
Yes, I can see it now—the heavenly eyes
Of that sweet lady, pretty Tlaära,
Illumining the window toward the sea.
She loves me, even me, who have beside
No love in all the world; her little hands
Part softly back the redwood's rosy limbs,
Low swinging in the winds, lest they should hide
This sullen, crownless front—dear Tlaäira!—
And from that listening I was near to be
Plucked off by devils; I was well nigh blind,
Still gazing upon laurels that were knit
With the white light of immortality.
Sweet Tlaära, be patient, while I mourn
These last weak tears behind the heavy hearse
That bears the old dream from me: then again
I will go singing, as we walk at eve
Under the raining of the forest flowers,
And count my homely verses once again
By 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 wind
Rested 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 west
Hath 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 crown
Swept 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 pettishly
Slips 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 days
And nights of exile, made me strong enough
To repossess a kingdom, that, henceforth,
Shall brighten round thy beauty; on thy lip
I 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 enough
To sweep thy shadow from my royalty.
Command it, and I make the sweet oath o'er,
Till yonder brightly rising planet creeps
Into 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 mistrust
Darkening the beauty of serener faith,
And we be lovers as we were before.
My life, young empress, is involved in thine
As water is in water: mingling waves,
Catching one light and shade, our lives shall flow
Till they strike broken on the ice of death.
But this, our happy summering of love
Must sometime have its ending. Yesterday
We 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 arms
Folded 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 not
How 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 again
Kiss 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 feel
Your kisses—closer, sweet! nor yet—nor yet;
I cannot see the eyes that said to mine
Their speechless love so kindly—God! his needs
Are all above my answering—take me Thou."
The harvester is pleased who finds a flower
Blood-red or golden, in the dusky wheat,
Rustling against his stooping, but the child
Laughs 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 black
And rough with poisonous blisters. Such a child
Was Tlaära, and such a flower, her love.
She saw no more the hills of Tlascala
Crooking 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 ironsand
To fiery opal and bright chrysophrase:
For 'twixt her eyes and all the sweet discourse
Nature, 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 days
Trenched in their ancient snows, the mountains seemed
To mock her low estate; though when Love's tongue
Talked of the self-same splendors once, they stood
Serene like prophets, under whose white hairs
The lines of victory-seeing thoughts are fixed.
Beyond their bright tops great Hualco strained
His 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 strength
Of all its sinews. On ten thousand shells
The strings were stirred, axes were set to edge;
The while the morning music of the horn
Went doubling on the track of Tyranny,
And startling up the echoes, that ran wild
Along the trembling hill-tops, in full cry.
Ruffled lay Pazcuaro's silver waves
Under the storm: melodious, and the belt
Of black and shaggy pines that Arrio wore,
With deadly spears of itzli, bristled bright;
For the roused realm was risen to replace
The usurpéd scepter in the kingly hand
Of its long exiled but true sovereignty.
So ended "the sweet summering of love"—
The royal lover of the forest maid
Went back as from imprisonment, like him—
The wondrous Mexic of the olden time—
Changed to the morning star,[22] henceforth to shine
Serenely 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 qualities
Befitting 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 high
His 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 way
The footsteps of her kingly lover went.
The goats-grew wild, for Tlaära forgot
The times of milking; idle stood the wheel,
A loom for spiders; to the heavy length
Of the dark shadow, keeping pace with death,
Her sighs drew out themselves, and listening low
She leaned against the faded face of earth,
As if its great dumb breast could move with life.
The lost wayfaring man, whose scanty lamp
In the wild rainy middle of the night
Burns sudden out—waits patient till he sees
The white-horned Daybreak pierce the cloudy east,
Travelling alone and slow, and the wet woods
Which from his mottled forehead parted, black,
Swing goldenly together. But, alas!
In the white dome of gentle womanhood
Love's sunrise knows no fellow. Sweetest heart!
How could she look for comfort? idols made
No answer to her praying; and at last,
Out of this sorrowful continent of life
Her visions failed of resting: mortal love
Drew back the hopes which vine-like clomb against
The 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 eyes
And the eternal brightness round about thee,
There lies an unsunned shoal, a blank of gloom;
Which no keen continuity of thought
Can burn or blast its way through, till the grave
Opens 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 up
And 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 pale
In barren isolation, when one step
Divides us only from the realm of rest—
Is it not so, oh great and friendly sea?"
But the waves put their beaded foreheads down
Against 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 pluck
A sunbeam from the midday of her love,
And grief was awed to silence, and her heart
Hushed into pulseless calm, as is the bard
What 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 coils
Illumining the darkness, warns aside
The 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 day
Busied 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 please
The princely eyes of the discrownéd king.
Through the green passes of Tlacamama
Struck 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 bow
Strung 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 sometimes
A 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 one
Fresh from the kisses of the dead, to see
His harmless corse decked out with all the shows
Befitting 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 hands
Clutched at the dust in impotent despair.
And he whose hunger-sunken eyes erewhile
Burned through the forests, where he wandered once
Like 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 love
Smote on his heart no longer, and the eyes
That 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 oft
Have crossed the orbit of divinest bliss,
And draw them, with some pale enchantment, down
From the good constellations—all their lengths
Of shining tresses, making them so fair,
Coiling like dying serpents, as they sink.
'T is not so much premeditated wrong
That fills the world with sorrow and dismay,
As influences of demons, mischievous,
Hurrying impassioned impulses to acts
That fast and penance never can undo.
This is my theory, and right or wrong,
'T is surely higher pleasure to believe
That 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 strewed
That they still shine upon us from the past,
As emeralds and ivory shine along
The sand-track of some perished caravan.
Houses of skulls, that erewhile all the hills
Made 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 palaces
Kissing the clouds, exceeding beautiful
With porphyry columns, and lined curiously
With 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 dwelt
In 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 song
And 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 arm
Had 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 elect
The 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 years
Lies like a silver garland on his brow,)
But that I know he cannot have her love,
Or having, could not keep it: that were false
To all of Nature's unwarpt impulses;
It is as if a budding bough should blush
Out of a sapless trunk; it cannot be—
Else is harsh violence to reason done,
And all true fitness sunken from the noon
Into the twilight of uncertainty.
Can the dull mist, where the swart Autumn hides
His 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 wars
His 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 foe
Than 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 sworn
This harmless stratagem were rated right;
I'll make a hint of it in some soft way;
And, for the princess, there may chance to be
Some vacancy i' the court—some office slight
Meet 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 privilege
For any pretty wilfulness she choose
To wing the hours and make away the grief
That 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 fierce
And perilous offices of bloody war.
When sleep that night came down upon the eyes
Of the good prince—for he was good, withal,
And did such acts as are immortalized—
He saw this famous lord of Tepechan
Thrust sidelong in a ditch, his white hair stirred
Under 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 awoke
He said 't was strange, indeed 't was passing strange,
Nay, quite a miracle, that sleeping thoughts
Should take no guise or shape of reasoning
That 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 thought
Of 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 caprice
Of hours of indolence—by Tläara
Doubtless forgotten, for the self-same moons
Had filled and faded over her and him;
That woman's heart at best was like the stream
Which 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 life
Had 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'er
With pious tears lamented: and his realm
Had 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 seem
I 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 life
Dims the great splendor of eternity.
Trug, some have trodden it beneath their feet.
Led by that bright curse, Genius, and have gone
On 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 mind
Can 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 time
That keeps right on, nor for our joys or griefs
Quickens or flags, had measured years, unblest
Or bright, as fate their passage made,
Hualco's fair and gentle servitor,
Faithless and recreant to the veteran chief,
Within the folding arms of royalty
Sheltered 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 steps
Crack up the harvestless ridges where we starve!—
For desolate, wronged Tläara, was left
Only the wretched change of misery.
The imperial triumphs sounded through the hills,
With undertones of the perpetual songs
Of gayety, and splendor, and delights,
Or, right or wrong, that most in palaces
Have had dominion from the earliest time
And she as one doomed, innocent, to death,
Fast in the shadows of his columns chained,
Saw her brief visions faded to the hues
Of fixed and damnable realities.
Night had shut up her little day of love
With all its leafy whispers; in her sky
The sunset like a wivern winged with fire
Had burned the flowery thickets of the clouds
And left them black and lonesome, and, like eyes
In 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 crew
Of rebel angels, whose undying pride
Like 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 ghosts
Of 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 time
That thrilled my heart with tempests of such joys
As 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 life
For 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 knew
Hualco'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 close
From the dim hour when twilight's rosy hedge
Sprang from the field of sunset, till deep night
Swept 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 despair
Hang on the sepulchre of buried hope
The fiery garlands of their love-lorn songs.
Though such gift turnéd on its pearly hinge
Sweet 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 while
Makes glad the commonest way, but like the dew
Which 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 cheeks
Out of its flower-cups, and go mateless on
Across the ages to eternity?
Farewell, my prince, my king, a last farewell!
My love is all for fame, and from this hour
Against my bosom with a fonder clasp
Than 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 wherewith
To gauge my nature; she is powerless
To 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 worm
Knotting itself for anger at my feet—
My feet, now planted on the burnt, bare rocks,
Under whose bloodless ribs the river of death
Runs black with mortal sorrow. Vex me not
With your low love; my heart is mated with
The 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 be
Than rainy meadows, blue with violets?
The walls built firm against the massy heights
That stay me up so well, are seamed with gold,
Sparkling like broken granite, and green stalks
Run up the unfrequent paths, lifting their blooms
Into the long still sunshine, where no change
Shall ever earth them up. It is in vain
Ye tempt me from my steady footing back
To the dim level of mortality.
What! think you I would leave this pain-bought place
For Love's soft beckoning? Nay, ye know me not.
Though the wild stormy North with fretful wings
Flew at my fastness till it toppled hard
Against 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 brain
That made me turn the thorny point of hate
Which 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 lipt
By the anointed priesthood, day by day,
May need more to be prayed for than the curse
Of a profane, unmeditative mood.
"Mine! he is all mine! she may bear his name.
Or in the golden shadows of his crown
Strut 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 skill
Than any woman here in Tlascala.
In some green leafy closet of the woods
I 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 yet
From these wild wasting pains, and from the scorn
Of that bad woman whose most wicked wiles
Have wronged the excellent king, and me have wronged.
But that is nothing: why should I have said
That I had any harms? they all are his.
Else will I go into some ugly cave
Where vipers lodge, and choke them till they sting
And make me but a spirit. I will build
A palace with a window toward the earth,
And train white flowers—my lord loves best white flowers—
And if there be a language more divine
Than love knows here, I'll learn it, though it take
Half the long ages of eternity."
There came into the groves of Tlascala
An old man from the wars, where he had worn
Commands and victories, and won such fame
That with the names of gods his, intertwined,
Was seen in temples, yet by some great pain
So 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 hairs
The claspéd arms of tenderness, and struck
His bright hopes into ruins, so that life
Had 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 time
That folds earth's shadow, like a poison flower,
And leaves life's last waves brokenly along
The unknown borders of eternity.
'T is an extremity that warns us back
From staggering on, alas! we know not what.
With hatred's damning seal upon our souls,
How shall we ask for mercy? Shall the gods
Forgive the unforgiving? or sweet Peace
The red complexion of the scorner's cheek
Fold to her quiet bosom? Nay, my child,
We have not in the world an enemy
Bad as that pride, which sets its devil strength
Against the grave, the gods, and everything."
Then she who was so meekly calm before,
Half rising out of death, as if that plea
Tightened 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 licks
Their streaky beauty from the smoking blood
That drenches her dead cubs: and will she fawn,
And her fierce eyes grow meekly sorrowful,
And her dilated nostril in the dust
Cower humbly at your feet? I tell you, no!—
That is a word for injury to use
In 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 us
That the forgiven may be trusted too.
Dying! thou sayest I'm dying! yes, 'tis true!
I feel the tide outflowing!—and for this
Shall 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 grave
The heart is done with aching, and the eyes
Are 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 day
Breaking so white along the cloudy east?
Not since the fading of my lovelit dream
Have I beheld a light so heavenly.
Nature seems all astir; the tree-tops move
As with birds going through them, and the dews
Hang burning, lamp-like, thick among the leaves.
All the long year past I have risen betimes,
For sake of morning purples and rich heaps
Of red-brown broideries—shaping in my thought
The gorgeous chamber of a queen, the while
I 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 playfellows
Gone 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 bright
With skins of ounces; drowsing into sleep,
I heard the simples simmering at the fire;
Heard my scared housemates whispering each to each
That 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 gone
To the last refuge—some contented stay
Along the valleys where the hedgerows keep
The summer grass bright longest. When we played
On hill or meadow, oft I left the sports
To climb the rough bare sea-cliffs; when we sung
I mocked the screaming eagle; when we sought
Flowers for our pastimes, I was sure to bring
The brightest and most deadly—'t was the bent
Of my audacious nature. Like the dove,
That foulish sits upon the serpent's eggs,
Nor, till she feels beneath her pretty wings
The stirring of the cold white-bellied brood,
Flies to the shelter of her proper home,
So has it been with me; soft, I untied
The hands that set the pitfall. I am down,
Yet proud Hualco, girt in armor, fears
To leap into the dark with me, and take
The embrace of my weak arms. Erect and free
He dare not mock me, fallen and in bonds;
For who would tempt the hungry lioness
With the fresh look of blood? Though I were dead,
If he were near, my stagnant life would stir,
And I would close upon immortal power
To 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 eye
Of Truth will never stare into his heart,
And search its sinful secrets, withering off
The leprous scales of perjury wherein
They are peeled up.
"Ye hated, monstrous things,
Whose trade is torment, in your troughs of fire
Rock idly, drawing back your ugly heads
Into their proper caverns: no sharp tooth
Wounds like the stinging of a conscience roused!
Leave him to that: he cannot 'scape it long.
I pray no mercy; beyond mortal strength
Men may be tempted—I am human, too.
If, thirsting in a desert, one draw near
With golden cups of water in his hands,
How hardly do we fill our mouths with dust;
If fever parch us, pleasant is the dew
Of 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 storm
That 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 sign
That tells me he is happy.' That is passed!
Pray, if thou wilt—my lips are dumb of prayer."
Struck with the lovely ruin, ebbing life
Sent 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 grave
To the great sorrow of this death-winged prayer,
And for its sake about this sweet soul wrap
Blest immortality! be piteous, Heaven,
For she is murdered by inconstancy!
Bend softly low, and hear her cruel wrongs
Plead 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 lies
Drowsing 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 times
Some comrade in his last extremity;
But now my heart, unused to such a strait,
Plays the weak woman with me. Fighting once
In the thick front of battle, I beheld
Our grim foe open wide his red-leaved book;
I felt his cold hand touch me; saw him fix
His 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 locks
Hung thick about my brows; life had no chance
I feared to combat with a single hand;
Now I am better spared—old and unfit
For wars or gamesome pastimes—but have lost
The 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, keep
Your 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 dream
That you are that most fair and gentle maid
Who tended once the chief of Tepechan."
I know not if 'tis true, they often say
Of this intenser action of the mind,
That it is madness: she of whom I sing,
Lost, loving Tlaära, in realms apart
From joy or sorrow, made herself a world,
Nor sight she saw nor sound she heard they knew
Who 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 land
In 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 moon
Walked, turning golden furrows on the clouds.
At last was set the night's most dark eclipse,
And yet she saw or seemed to see arise
Tezcuco's capital, within whose walls
What maddening scenes her jealous fancy drew!
The midnight passed, and lifting up her eyes,
From that long vigil, she beheld afar
The awful burning of volcanic fires,
Which seemed as if had fled ten thousand stars
From 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 more
Or fear or hope—the ultimate secret read
Of that too common but dread history.
She only said, how calmly! "The slim reed
That grows beside the most untravelled road,
With its wild blossoms yet may bless the eyes.
Of some chance pilgrim; over the dead tree
Mosses run bright together; in the hedge
The prickles of the thistle's bluish leaves
Hold, all day, spike-like, shining globes of dew;
Even from the stonyest crevice, some stray thorn
May crook its knotty body toward the sun.
And give the ant-hill shelter, but my death
Will 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 time
We were so blest together.' I would leave,
(My frailty and my follies all forgot)
A pleasant memory somewhere. As we look
With pining eyes upon the faded year,
Forgetful of the vexing winds, that took
The green tops of the woods down; picking bare
The 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, I
Fall 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 abysm
Trails itself out in light, the human heart
Wastes all its life in love—that sacrifice
The consummation of diviner bliss
Than he can feel, who, looking from a dream
Sees palpable, his soul's unchambered thoughts
Moving along the ages; calm and bright,
Like mighty wings, spread level. It is well
Earth's fair things fade so soon, else for their sake
Mortals 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 shake
The 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 company
And turn our steps into the dark, alone;
If he were waiting for me I could pass
Death 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, held
By drear enchantments from their demon mates.
Another night-time, and I shall have found
A 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 smooth
These long and heavy tresses, still as bright
As when their wave of beauty bathed the hand
That unto death betrayed me. Nay, 'tis well!
I pray you do not weep; no other fate
Were half so fitting for me. On the grave
Light, 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 time
When 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 star
Divide 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 boughs
Murmurous and cool with shadows, we reach out
Our naked arms, and when the noontide heat
Consumes us, talk of chance, and fate.
Even from the lap of Love we lean away
Like a sick child from a kind nurse's arms,
And petulantly tease for any toy
A hand-breadth out of reach; and from the way
Where hedge and harvest blend, irregular,
Their bordering of green and gold, we turn
And 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 out
Wooing the silence with a silver tongue,
And then our feeble hands let slip the staff,
That helpt our fruitless journey, and our cheeks
Shrivel from smiles and roses; so our sun
Goes, 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 sweeps
The sunshine from the summer, o'er her face
Came the chill shadow, and her grief was done.
Maidens, whose kindling blushes softly burn
Through 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 God
Shall, 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 old
Went writhing down the blue air, weak and bruised
To 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 wings
Upon his troubled soul, as once there came
To 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 transformed
To a black scorpion; but his youth of heart
Dropt off, as from the girdled sapling drops
The unripe fruitage; hope was done with him.
With calm, deliberative eyes, he looked
Upon the kingdoms, parceled at his will;
Over his harvests saw the sun go down,
As though his rising on the morrow brought
The issue of a battle; as one lost,
Who, by the tracks of beasts would find his way
To human habitations, so he strayed
Farther and farther from the rest he sought.
From the sweet altar where the lamp of love
Burned through the temple's twilight, his sad steps
Thenceforward turned aside, and entered in
That dreadful fane, reared sacredly to him
Of the four arrows and blue twisted club,
Whose waist is girdled with a golden snake,
While round his neck a collar of human hearts
Hangs in dread token of his murderous trade.
The green-robed goddess of the fiery wand
That on the manta's fleeces rides at night
Across the sea-waves, beckoned him sometimes,
And he would fain have gone, but that a hand
Like that which she of Katelolco held
Back from the river of Death what time she heard
The dead bones making prophecies of war,
Still held him among mortals; but he saw,
Lovely as life and habited in snow
No youth upon whose forehead shone the cross,
Such as to that pale sleeper gave the power
To lift the cold stone of her sepulchre
And bear her mournful warning to the world.
For his soul's peace he built a rocky bower
And 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 sea
Kneel on the brown bare sand and lay his face
In 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 melodies
To 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 pipes
And rosy jangling shells, mixing with hymns,
Told to their melancholy king what times
To give his homage to the Invisible.
But from the darkening wake of his lost love,
The wild and desolate echoes evermore
Went crying to the pitying arms of God;
And the crushed strings of his complaining lyre
Under the kissing hands of poesy
Thrilled never with such sweetness, as erewhile,
Beneath the bloomy boughs of Tlascala.
Sat the young Day, new-risen; at her feet,
Wrapt loose together, lay the burial clouds;
And on her forehead, like the unsteady crown
Of 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 corn
Pressed to her bosom, lessening, down the west;
And thou, dusk huntress! through whose heavy locks
Shimmer the icy arrows of the stars—
About whose solemn brow once blinded Faith
Wound 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 wave
Waded 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 path
The ocelot drew back, and in her lair
Growled 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 Xalapa
Lifted its limber folds into the light.
From his black cirque of rocks, stood up alone
The monarch of the mountains;[3] his breast,
The fiery foldings of his garment, bracked
And 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 lay
Twining 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 pines
Shook their thick limbs together, as the winds
Toiled past them toward the red gaps of the hills,
Through which the Morning came, and, where, for hours
Tanning her cheeks with kisses, they would stay.
But to the hopeless heaven itself were sad:
The darkened senses fail to apprehend
The elements of beauty; the dull gaze
Is introverted to the world within,
Whose all is ruins—seeing never more
The all-serene and blessed harmony
That lives and breathes through Nature: to the air
Giving its motion and its melody,
The trees their separate colors, the wild brooks
Their silver syllables, 'gainst fruitless stones
Joining bright grasses, knitting goldenly
The clear white of the day's departing train
Into the blank, black border of the night,
Dew raining on the dust, and on the heart
The 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 shrine
Reared by the priests of Hometeuli,[4] long
Gone down in still processions to the dark,
Lay fallen Hualco—his unmailèd arms
Prostrate along the dust, while, like live coals,
His eyes, no longer shadowed by a crown,
Deep in their blue and famine-sunken rings
Burned 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 sun
In broken flutterings to keep its hold
Up level with the mountains, more sublime
Than 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 power
That rounds the ambitious aims of selfishness:
His broken people he would fain have built
Into a mighty column, that should stand,
The beacon of the unborn centuries;
From the blind statues where Idolatry
Sunk 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 face
Now with the piteous pallor of despair
Was overspread, and now was all transformed
Into the stormy beauty of roused hate.
Such change is seen when o'er some buried fire
The gust shoves heavy, and the quickened sparks
Burn red together in the ashen ground.
Fragments of temples, sacred to the rites
Of 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 skins
Dragged, as he sailed for fabulous Tlapalan.
A prince, and yet a dweller in the woods
So long, that in his path the fiercest wolves
Walked tame as with their mates, and o'er his head
Howled that strange beast[8] that to his fellows cries
Till they devour the feast himself tastes not;
And flying rats gnawed their repasts, hard by,
From tawny barks of oily trees, or made
With 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 same
Whether 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 trees
Spread over him their cool and tent-like shade,
And pillows of the ceiba down lay white
Upon on his bed of moss, or whether hot
And sharp against his face, its iron leaves
The mirapanda thrust: To husk the sheathes
From the sweet fruitage of the plant of light,
Or, starved, to climb the rugged steeps wherein
The shelves of unsunned stone were folded full
Of slimy lodgers, were to him as one.
A bright bud, broken from a royal tree
And planted-in the desert, how shall I
Sing his strange story fitly, and so make
A new moon in the sky of poesy?
The bards of fair Tezcuco long ago
Won from the mountains where he hid, forlorn,
Treasures of beauty shining still along
The dreary ways poetic pilgrims go,
Like fountains roofed with rainbows—making all
His wrongs and toils, in cloudy exile borne,
The brief eclipse of the most glorious day
That ever shone along the Aztec hills.
While in the broidery of a baby king
Yet swathed, unconscious, all the lovely maids
From Actolan to Champala had come,
And from their girdles loosening the pearls
And 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 hung
About the empire's neck. Ill-fated prince!
When the glad music sounding at his birth
Was 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 see
The purposes God puts about our wo,
Behind the plowing storm run shining waves,
Like beetles through new furrows; the same hand
That peels the tough husk of the chrysalis,
Gives it its double wings to fly withal;
The rain that makes the wren sail heavily
Sets on the millet stocks their golden tops:
And earthly immortality is bought
At 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 earth
The seed must be imprisoned, ere to lif
It quicken and sprout brightly; the sharp stroke
Brings from the flint its fiery property;
And that we call misfortune, to the wise
Is a good minister, and knowledge brings:
And knowledge is the basis whereon power
Builds her eternal arches. In the dust
Of 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 leap
Nimbly from wave to wave along the sea,
Enchanting with sweet tongues disastrous ships
Till the rough crews are half in love with death,
Have any spell of evil witchery
To 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 hands
Sow 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 mock
To preach to us repentance and belief.
Sweet saints I pray in piteous love agree,
And from the ugly bosom of despair
Draw back the nestling hand-heal the vexed heart
And steady it what time the faltering faith
Keeps its own council with determinate Will,
The hardy pioneer of all success.
"Among the ruins of my rightful hopes
Shall I crouch down and say I am content?
It is not in my nature. I would scorn
The weakness of submission, though to that
Life's miserable chance were narrowed up.
Shame to the wearer of a beard who wears
No manhood with it; double shame to him
Whose plaything is the fillet of a crown.
Even beasts whose lower senses are shut in
From purposes of reason, have maintained
A lordly disposition; taming not
To the sleek touches of the keeper's hand.
The uses of humility are till
For underlings and women—not for kings.
And yet to fate, if there be any fate,
Even the gods must yield; they cannot make
The 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, essay
To bend the untempered iron of destiny
About my forehead? 'T is most maddening,
The attempt and not the achievement—yet th' attempt
Is all the wedge that splits its knotty way
Betwixt the impossible and possible.
From the flat shrubless desert to the waves
Of 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 space
Its free wings fall back baffled. So it is
With gods and men: each have their atmospheres,
Which they are free to move in, and to which
From ampler quests, they needs must flounder down.
Sometimes, when goaded to the utmost verge
Of possible endurance—gathering all
My sorrows to one purpose, rebel like,
I would step out into the dark, when lo!
Fate ties my unwilling feet, and 'twixt my eyes
And the great Infinite, full in the sun
Makes quiet pictures. But ere I can shape
This chaos of crushed manhood that I am
To any purposes, the faithless light
Breaks up, and all is darkness as it was.
So are we crippled ever. Even like
The 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 overclimb
The steep high walls about us; now, alas!
Dragging back heavily into itself.
Like am I to a drowning man, whose hands
Hold idly to the unsubstantial waves;
Or like some dreamer, on whose conscious form
A wretched weight lies heavy, while his tongue
Refuses 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 limbs
Bound, 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 Power
Sweeps 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 darknesses
Where 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 dew
The gods dwell over us, and have they need
To buy our favor with some piteous sign?
Their bliss we cannot lessen nor increase.
But as we grow up to the topling heights
Of our ambitions, more and more we catch
Some dim reflection of their sovereignty.
The path is narrow that goes up, and on,
And Fame a jealous mistress. They who reach
To take her hand must let all others go.
"Borders and plaits of red and saphirine
Are pretty in the robe of royalty,
But to the drowning man, who strains against
The whelming waves, the gaud were cumbersome,
And straightway shredded off, and wet, wild rocks
Hugged to his bosom with a closer clasp
Than the young mother to her baby gives.
When from his steady footing hungry Death
Goes moaning back, the time has come to pluck
The 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 day
Dies, and is wrapt in purple like the rest.
Years run to waste, and age comes stealing slow
On our imperfect plans, till in our veins
The 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 howls
Crash through the shaken forest like a storm,
Would any beast divide his prey with him!
Or wild bird, in the flowing of his mane
Tangling 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 life
The 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 north
For me to breathe, with Maxtala alive!
Yet am I beggared, orphaned of all hope,
Herding with the coyotli,[13] while he reigns
The monarch of my palace; and the raids,
From Zalahua's shade to Tlascala,
Bend for his gracious favor till their locks
Flow 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 musical
That 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, Eve
Walks 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 power
Of all the gods, his wanton lip shall drink
The wine of wormwood. I will husk full soon
The 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 proves
The executioner's brief drawing off,
To strike betwixt the eyes—the sly recoil
Before the deadly spring—this, only this!"
On this wise spoke Hualco: otherwhiles,
The drowsy monotone of murmurous bees
Crept 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 heart
Gave all their sweetest comfort. As the bough
Drops 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 all
Have from her naked bosom drawn at times
Drafts sweet as crusted nectar.
Charily!
She gives us entertainment, if we come
With hearts unsanctified and noisy feet,
Into her tents of pious solitude.
But when we go in worshipful, she spreads
Her altars with the sacrament of peace,
And lifts into her solemn psalmody
Our spirits' else unuttered melodies.
'T is not the outward garniture of things
That 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 palm
That swung its odorous censers in the court,)
Texcuco's sovereign, who at bay had held
The trampling foe, tumultuous, which Tepan
Sent, with a robber thirst and barbarous strength,
To subjugate the fair land of the world—
More fair for courtesy than even the arts
Which reared its temples and its palaces;
Held them at bay, until his chiefs and legions,
Borne down like cornstocks in a whirlwind, lay
Along 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 delight
An unseen spirit plucked him, and his soul
Went 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 drop
In 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 heard
The plaining voice of one[16] who died for him,
Saying, "Hualco, let my wasted blood
Cement the broken beauty of thy throne,
And so shine evermore upon thine eyes
Like bright veins in the marble." He could see
His pleading innocence, thrust by tyranny,
Over the grave's steep edges, to the dark,
And all the train of lovelight, hitherto
Drawn after his firm footsteps, faded off
To 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 wood
Rest 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 told
How his quick shaft had blinded a huge beast
That 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 coo
To his pet tigress, penning her at night.
There was another picture, whose dark ground
No gleam of light illumined: hands, close-bound
From all the arrows, and the jetty locks
Clipt 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 misery
To that worst phase of all—the terrible sense
Of injury done, with utter impotence,
To lift the pallid forehead out of death,
And crown it with our sorrow.
I believe
Such griefs make many madmen, driving some
Into the lonesome wilderness, where all
That fine intelligence which shines intrenched
Fast in the mortal eyes of innocent men,
Throbs fitful through the film, obscured at last
To 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 mad
Such as do eat and die not; and where dwell
Shapes incomplete, with brows of pale misease,
That in the moon's infrequent glimmering
Run from their shadows, gibbering their fear;
Where earth seems from its beauteous uses worn
As with a slow eternity of pain—
Battered and worn, till no sweet grass can grow
Upon its old, scarred body, any more.
This was a grief indeed. No stabbing steel
Strikes 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 time
Were a nonentity—if such an act
Had been beforehand of celerity—
And such a pretty dalliance with chance
Pressed into service,—he had held secure
In his own hands, the destiny which now
Stood 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 be
Strung in the rosary of the love of God,
And flung about us mortals, there is none
Hath such divine excess of excellence
As that creative and mad faculty
Which 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 melodies
Crumble away to silence, and fade off.
Blest is the wanderer out of human love
Who hath been answered by this oracle.
What need hath he of the poor shows of power,
Who can charm angels out of heaven, and cross
Their 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 see
Will stoop above him, and between their palms
Press them out dry, or the wild breeze may stop
And blow them loosely open to the sun.
Widen no rings about your fires for him
Who catches the white mantles of the clouds,
And round his bosom in the chilly night
Gathers 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 ear
Fall in a softer music than on yours
The lovely prattle of your lisping babes:
For in his soul is a transforming power
By you unapprehended and unknown.
And he of whom I sing, shaping his wo
To the charmed syllables of poesy,[17]
Built visionary kingdoms, and recrowned
His naked brows out of the light of dreams.
Even as the white steeds of the desert keep
Before the clouds of hot and blinding sand,
Ran his wild visions forward of the truth.
Sometimes he sung of maidens, shut in towers
Of unhewn rocks, cold bowers of beauty, where
The moonlight blew across the beds of love
Tinged with the scarlet of the sacrifice;
Of the blue sky sometimes, or of the moon
Walking night's cloudy wilderness, as walks
The white doe through a jungle; of steep rocks
Burnt red and pastureless, where strings of goats
Climbed, hungry, to the rattle of picked bones
In the near eyry; sometimes of the hour
When in the sea of twilight the round sun
Sinks slow and sullen, and, one after one,
Circles of shadows crusted thick with stars
Come 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 hope
Dwell ever in the haunted house of Fear,
And even the God incarnate wept to see
The blanched and purposeless repose wherein
We 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 drowned
In storms of tears, and fell back on his heart,
As falls back to the earth the pretty moth
That flies into the rain—its wild wings drenched
From beauty to the color of the ground.
And the spring sprouted, and the summer smiled,
And day went darkly down, and morn came up
And ran between the mountains goldenly;
The wandering wasp shut up its thin blue wings,
Pricking the soft green bark of the capote
With 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 light
The 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 down
About his slumber-while the blessed dew
Sunk pearl-like 'twixt his long and uncombed locks.
For whether morn ran goldenly along
The mountain rifts, and with her kisses broke
The 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 trees
Ruffled their tops together, through the which
A 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 fringed
By 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 flax
Twisted to tangly wisps. Here, until now,
Spinning among the birds, a peasant's child,
With eyes poetic, tawny cheeks, and hair
Dark as a storm in winter, hath been used
To 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 weaves
The dark thread of her story with my song.
Ah, as she cuts the shining jointed stocks,
And packs them into heaps, tossing away
The heavy tresses from her stooping brow,
Little she deems their sable near to line
The 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 waves
Betwixt her horns, nor staggered, and so clomb
To fields of sweeter pasture. In the west;
A ridge of pines, that burnt themselves to flame
An hour ago, set their jagged tops
Black in th' horizon. Thence, suddenly,
Flitted a shape or shadow, and the feet
Of 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 woods
With undulating sweetness, as a cloud
Of yellow bees covers a limb of flowers—
Drinks eagerly the faintest sound of praise,
And the poor peasant was less firmly held
From quickly flying, by the hands that clung
To 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 wave
From their far tops, of splendor; then, as one
Whose 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 enough
To 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 once
Hugs 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 pit
Shakes the red shadow from her soul, and turns
To front the demon that has dragged her there—
Believe me, she is stronger than they all
Who dare not wait to listen!"
Oh, to such
Doubt not but that some piteous god will come,
Beauteously whitening down the blue of heaven,
And feed their souls with the blest sweetnesses
Drawn out of Mercy's everliving wells,
Till the air round them, with tumultuous joy
Hangs shivering like a wilderness of leaves,
And drifts of light run rippling through the clouds
Like 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 price
That 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 went
Misguided forward.[18] Such tumultuous joy
As filled her bosom only they may know
Who, 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 thatch
Of 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 all
At 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 love
The crowning nuptial; for old age, repose,
And for the worn and weary, kindly death
To make the all-composing lullaby.
But nothing in this low and ruined world
Rears the meek impress of the Son of God
So 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 abysm
A new-born star ope'd its gold-lidded eye,
And for a season in the depths of hell
Cooled 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 met
This 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 does
Shoals of dry, barren dust. Somewhere is wrong!
And night was past, and in the lap of day
The morning nestled, and yet other nights
Followed by other days had come and gone,
And the wild sorrow of the tempter's voice
Had dwarfed to utter silence, yet the maid
Had 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 laid
His crown upon her lap, for her sweet eyes,
And, for the zoning of her fond arms, gave
The 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 white
And 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 incomparable
To 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 cheek
Flushed out of olive, scarlet, and her heart
Drank in the essence of all happiness.
It was as if humanity attained
The stature of its immortality,
And earth were gathered up into the heavens.
For Love makes all things beautiful, and finds
No wilderness without its pleasure tent,
While Genius goes with melancholy steps
Searching the world for the selectest forms
Of high, and pure, and passionless excellence—
Large-browed, unmated Genius—yearning still
For the divinities which in its dreams
Brighten 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 goat
Stood 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 fair
Even alien fields; and if Hualco sighed,
She put a crown of kisses on his brow,
And drew him, with her smiling, from the thoughts
That wandered toward Tezcuco's palaces.
And for the vague, unfriendly fear, that made
His lessening love a possibility,
She gave into his hand the secretest key
Of her heart's treasury. Sometimes they walked
Between the moonbeams slanting up the hills,
In ways of shadow, edged with white cold light,
Or sat in solitudes where never sound
Fed the dumb lips of echo; but the flat
Of desertness, low lying, bare, and brown,
Their praises like a verdurous meadow drew,
And the black nettle and rude prickly burr
Challenged 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 glance
May 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 arms
The awful flames of martyrdom; but quick
The piteous flowing of her gentle tears
Dried, 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 brows
Under their hoods of thorns, low from the light,
As once the chieftain of the Aztec hosts
Heard 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 hear
The 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 star
Swam 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 hearts
For which at some time he hath not unloosed
The blushing binding of his nimble shafts.
Poor Tlaära forgot that ugly death
Burrowed in mortal soil, when that her lord
Kissed her, and called her "sweetest;" all her joy
Was basemented upon a smile of his;
And if he frowned, the sun shut up his light
Ah, Tlaära, thou dream'st; awake, be wise
Already the sleek, golden cub, erewhile
Fondled and hidden in thy bosom, growls.
As some poor spinner puts a little wool
Among her flax, to save the web from fire,
So she has tried to twist with her poor name
Some little splendor. Fate has baffled her;
But when the mists of tears shall clear away,
She may attain to such majestic heights
And atmospheres of glory as shut up
Life's lower planes, with all the murmurs made
O'er the death-fluttering of fledgling hopes—
All discords horrible, and rude complaints,
That rise, when at some direful exigence
Even 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 on
The smiling look of life, 't is wise to lay
The shroud about it, and so go again,
Among what joys are left, with decent calm.
When that which seemed the angel of our heaven
Shuts close its wings, and its white body shrinks
To a black, glistering coil, 't is little safe
To wait the growth of fangs. And when we find
That which, a little distant, seemed to us
The clambering of roses on the rocks,
To be the flag of pirates, shall we stay
Hugging the coast, and, dropping anchor, hunt
The 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 well
The obstinate traveller might in pride oppose
His puny shoulder to the icy slip
Of 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 tells
Her love off, even to the cross; and verily
In telling this, and telling only this,
Can they fill out her nature: so again
Come 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 hills
Sit 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 kiss
To give her, in the accustomed way, reply.
But there was silence at the first, and then
The 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 tears
Flowed faster than the blossoms from the bough
'Gainst which she leaned, despairing. A great wo
Crushes the fading of a century
Into 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 astir
The world grows young again. And Tlaära
Chid 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 brow
Sullen with sorrow and remorseless pain,
Talked to his troubled soul in this wild sort:
"So I am he, who in yet beardless years
Did 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 lie
Reaching into the vale of years, and still
A 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 feel
The tying of its hands. My brain must crack
Or I must slip the dusty leash I wear,
And run into the dark.
"See! the dead day
Drifts out in scarlet light, and the round moon
Whitens like day-break through the sullen clouds.
I scarce can see our cabin through the gaps
Of hills and woods, the night comes on so fast.
Yes, I can see it now—the heavenly eyes
Of that sweet lady, pretty Tlaära,
Illumining the window toward the sea.
She loves me, even me, who have beside
No love in all the world; her little hands
Part softly back the redwood's rosy limbs,
Low swinging in the winds, lest they should hide
This sullen, crownless front—dear Tlaäira!—
And from that listening I was near to be
Plucked off by devils; I was well nigh blind,
Still gazing upon laurels that were knit
With the white light of immortality.
Sweet Tlaära, be patient, while I mourn
These last weak tears behind the heavy hearse
That bears the old dream from me: then again
I will go singing, as we walk at eve
Under the raining of the forest flowers,
And count my homely verses once again
By 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 wind
Rested 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 west
Hath 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 crown
Swept 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 pettishly
Slips 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 days
And nights of exile, made me strong enough
To repossess a kingdom, that, henceforth,
Shall brighten round thy beauty; on thy lip
I 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 enough
To sweep thy shadow from my royalty.
Command it, and I make the sweet oath o'er,
Till yonder brightly rising planet creeps
Into 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 mistrust
Darkening the beauty of serener faith,
And we be lovers as we were before.
My life, young empress, is involved in thine
As water is in water: mingling waves,
Catching one light and shade, our lives shall flow
Till they strike broken on the ice of death.
But this, our happy summering of love
Must sometime have its ending. Yesterday
We 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 arms
Folded 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 not
How 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 again
Kiss 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 feel
Your kisses—closer, sweet! nor yet—nor yet;
I cannot see the eyes that said to mine
Their speechless love so kindly—God! his needs
Are all above my answering—take me Thou."
The harvester is pleased who finds a flower
Blood-red or golden, in the dusky wheat,
Rustling against his stooping, but the child
Laughs 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 black
And rough with poisonous blisters. Such a child
Was Tlaära, and such a flower, her love.
She saw no more the hills of Tlascala
Crooking 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 ironsand
To fiery opal and bright chrysophrase:
For 'twixt her eyes and all the sweet discourse
Nature, 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 days
Trenched in their ancient snows, the mountains seemed
To mock her low estate; though when Love's tongue
Talked of the self-same splendors once, they stood
Serene like prophets, under whose white hairs
The lines of victory-seeing thoughts are fixed.
Beyond their bright tops great Hualco strained
His 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 strength
Of all its sinews. On ten thousand shells
The strings were stirred, axes were set to edge;
The while the morning music of the horn
Went doubling on the track of Tyranny,
And startling up the echoes, that ran wild
Along the trembling hill-tops, in full cry.
Ruffled lay Pazcuaro's silver waves
Under the storm: melodious, and the belt
Of black and shaggy pines that Arrio wore,
With deadly spears of itzli, bristled bright;
For the roused realm was risen to replace
The usurpéd scepter in the kingly hand
Of its long exiled but true sovereignty.
So ended "the sweet summering of love"—
The royal lover of the forest maid
Went back as from imprisonment, like him—
The wondrous Mexic of the olden time—
Changed to the morning star,[22] henceforth to shine
Serenely 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 qualities
Befitting 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 high
His 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 way
The footsteps of her kingly lover went.
The goats-grew wild, for Tlaära forgot
The times of milking; idle stood the wheel,
A loom for spiders; to the heavy length
Of the dark shadow, keeping pace with death,
Her sighs drew out themselves, and listening low
She leaned against the faded face of earth,
As if its great dumb breast could move with life.
The lost wayfaring man, whose scanty lamp
In the wild rainy middle of the night
Burns sudden out—waits patient till he sees
The white-horned Daybreak pierce the cloudy east,
Travelling alone and slow, and the wet woods
Which from his mottled forehead parted, black,
Swing goldenly together. But, alas!
In the white dome of gentle womanhood
Love's sunrise knows no fellow. Sweetest heart!
How could she look for comfort? idols made
No answer to her praying; and at last,
Out of this sorrowful continent of life
Her visions failed of resting: mortal love
Drew back the hopes which vine-like clomb against
The 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 eyes
And the eternal brightness round about thee,
There lies an unsunned shoal, a blank of gloom;
Which no keen continuity of thought
Can burn or blast its way through, till the grave
Opens 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 up
And 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 pale
In barren isolation, when one step
Divides us only from the realm of rest—
Is it not so, oh great and friendly sea?"
But the waves put their beaded foreheads down
Against 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 pluck
A sunbeam from the midday of her love,
And grief was awed to silence, and her heart
Hushed into pulseless calm, as is the bard
What 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 coils
Illumining the darkness, warns aside
The 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 day
Busied 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 please
The princely eyes of the discrownéd king.
Through the green passes of Tlacamama
Struck 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 bow
Strung 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 sometimes
A 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 one
Fresh from the kisses of the dead, to see
His harmless corse decked out with all the shows
Befitting 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 hands
Clutched at the dust in impotent despair.
And he whose hunger-sunken eyes erewhile
Burned through the forests, where he wandered once
Like 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 love
Smote on his heart no longer, and the eyes
That 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 oft
Have crossed the orbit of divinest bliss,
And draw them, with some pale enchantment, down
From the good constellations—all their lengths
Of shining tresses, making them so fair,
Coiling like dying serpents, as they sink.
'T is not so much premeditated wrong
That fills the world with sorrow and dismay,
As influences of demons, mischievous,
Hurrying impassioned impulses to acts
That fast and penance never can undo.
This is my theory, and right or wrong,
'T is surely higher pleasure to believe
That 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 strewed
That they still shine upon us from the past,
As emeralds and ivory shine along
The sand-track of some perished caravan.
Houses of skulls, that erewhile all the hills
Made 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 palaces
Kissing the clouds, exceeding beautiful
With porphyry columns, and lined curiously
With 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 dwelt
In 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 song
And 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 arm
Had 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 elect
The 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 years
Lies like a silver garland on his brow,)
But that I know he cannot have her love,
Or having, could not keep it: that were false
To all of Nature's unwarpt impulses;
It is as if a budding bough should blush
Out of a sapless trunk; it cannot be—
Else is harsh violence to reason done,
And all true fitness sunken from the noon
Into the twilight of uncertainty.
Can the dull mist, where the swart Autumn hides
His 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 wars
His 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 foe
Than 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 sworn
This harmless stratagem were rated right;
I'll make a hint of it in some soft way;
And, for the princess, there may chance to be
Some vacancy i' the court—some office slight
Meet 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 privilege
For any pretty wilfulness she choose
To wing the hours and make away the grief
That 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 fierce
And perilous offices of bloody war.
When sleep that night came down upon the eyes
Of the good prince—for he was good, withal,
And did such acts as are immortalized—
He saw this famous lord of Tepechan
Thrust sidelong in a ditch, his white hair stirred
Under 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 awoke
He said 't was strange, indeed 't was passing strange,
Nay, quite a miracle, that sleeping thoughts
Should take no guise or shape of reasoning
That 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 thought
Of 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 caprice
Of hours of indolence—by Tläara
Doubtless forgotten, for the self-same moons
Had filled and faded over her and him;
That woman's heart at best was like the stream
Which 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 life
Had 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'er
With pious tears lamented: and his realm
Had 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 seem
I 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 life
Dims the great splendor of eternity.
Trug, some have trodden it beneath their feet.
Led by that bright curse, Genius, and have gone
On 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 mind
Can 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 time
That keeps right on, nor for our joys or griefs
Quickens or flags, had measured years, unblest
Or bright, as fate their passage made,
Hualco's fair and gentle servitor,
Faithless and recreant to the veteran chief,
Within the folding arms of royalty
Sheltered 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 steps
Crack up the harvestless ridges where we starve!—
For desolate, wronged Tläara, was left
Only the wretched change of misery.
The imperial triumphs sounded through the hills,
With undertones of the perpetual songs
Of gayety, and splendor, and delights,
Or, right or wrong, that most in palaces
Have had dominion from the earliest time
And she as one doomed, innocent, to death,
Fast in the shadows of his columns chained,
Saw her brief visions faded to the hues
Of fixed and damnable realities.
Night had shut up her little day of love
With all its leafy whispers; in her sky
The sunset like a wivern winged with fire
Had burned the flowery thickets of the clouds
And left them black and lonesome, and, like eyes
In 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 crew
Of rebel angels, whose undying pride
Like 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 ghosts
Of 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 time
That thrilled my heart with tempests of such joys
As 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 life
For 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 knew
Hualco'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 close
From the dim hour when twilight's rosy hedge
Sprang from the field of sunset, till deep night
Swept 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 despair
Hang on the sepulchre of buried hope
The fiery garlands of their love-lorn songs.
Though such gift turnéd on its pearly hinge
Sweet 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 while
Makes glad the commonest way, but like the dew
Which 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 cheeks
Out of its flower-cups, and go mateless on
Across the ages to eternity?
Farewell, my prince, my king, a last farewell!
My love is all for fame, and from this hour
Against my bosom with a fonder clasp
Than 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 wherewith
To gauge my nature; she is powerless
To 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 worm
Knotting itself for anger at my feet—
My feet, now planted on the burnt, bare rocks,
Under whose bloodless ribs the river of death
Runs black with mortal sorrow. Vex me not
With your low love; my heart is mated with
The 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 be
Than rainy meadows, blue with violets?
The walls built firm against the massy heights
That stay me up so well, are seamed with gold,
Sparkling like broken granite, and green stalks
Run up the unfrequent paths, lifting their blooms
Into the long still sunshine, where no change
Shall ever earth them up. It is in vain
Ye tempt me from my steady footing back
To the dim level of mortality.
What! think you I would leave this pain-bought place
For Love's soft beckoning? Nay, ye know me not.
Though the wild stormy North with fretful wings
Flew at my fastness till it toppled hard
Against 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 brain
That made me turn the thorny point of hate
Which 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 lipt
By the anointed priesthood, day by day,
May need more to be prayed for than the curse
Of a profane, unmeditative mood.
"Mine! he is all mine! she may bear his name.
Or in the golden shadows of his crown
Strut 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 skill
Than any woman here in Tlascala.
In some green leafy closet of the woods
I 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 yet
From these wild wasting pains, and from the scorn
Of that bad woman whose most wicked wiles
Have wronged the excellent king, and me have wronged.
But that is nothing: why should I have said
That I had any harms? they all are his.
Else will I go into some ugly cave
Where vipers lodge, and choke them till they sting
And make me but a spirit. I will build
A palace with a window toward the earth,
And train white flowers—my lord loves best white flowers—
And if there be a language more divine
Than love knows here, I'll learn it, though it take
Half the long ages of eternity."
There came into the groves of Tlascala
An old man from the wars, where he had worn
Commands and victories, and won such fame
That with the names of gods his, intertwined,
Was seen in temples, yet by some great pain
So 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 hairs
The claspéd arms of tenderness, and struck
His bright hopes into ruins, so that life
Had 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 time
That folds earth's shadow, like a poison flower,
And leaves life's last waves brokenly along
The unknown borders of eternity.
'T is an extremity that warns us back
From staggering on, alas! we know not what.
With hatred's damning seal upon our souls,
How shall we ask for mercy? Shall the gods
Forgive the unforgiving? or sweet Peace
The red complexion of the scorner's cheek
Fold to her quiet bosom? Nay, my child,
We have not in the world an enemy
Bad as that pride, which sets its devil strength
Against the grave, the gods, and everything."
Then she who was so meekly calm before,
Half rising out of death, as if that plea
Tightened 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 licks
Their streaky beauty from the smoking blood
That drenches her dead cubs: and will she fawn,
And her fierce eyes grow meekly sorrowful,
And her dilated nostril in the dust
Cower humbly at your feet? I tell you, no!—
That is a word for injury to use
In 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 us
That the forgiven may be trusted too.
Dying! thou sayest I'm dying! yes, 'tis true!
I feel the tide outflowing!—and for this
Shall 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 grave
The heart is done with aching, and the eyes
Are 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 day
Breaking so white along the cloudy east?
Not since the fading of my lovelit dream
Have I beheld a light so heavenly.
Nature seems all astir; the tree-tops move
As with birds going through them, and the dews
Hang burning, lamp-like, thick among the leaves.
All the long year past I have risen betimes,
For sake of morning purples and rich heaps
Of red-brown broideries—shaping in my thought
The gorgeous chamber of a queen, the while
I 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 playfellows
Gone 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 bright
With skins of ounces; drowsing into sleep,
I heard the simples simmering at the fire;
Heard my scared housemates whispering each to each
That 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 gone
To the last refuge—some contented stay
Along the valleys where the hedgerows keep
The summer grass bright longest. When we played
On hill or meadow, oft I left the sports
To climb the rough bare sea-cliffs; when we sung
I mocked the screaming eagle; when we sought
Flowers for our pastimes, I was sure to bring
The brightest and most deadly—'t was the bent
Of my audacious nature. Like the dove,
That foulish sits upon the serpent's eggs,
Nor, till she feels beneath her pretty wings
The stirring of the cold white-bellied brood,
Flies to the shelter of her proper home,
So has it been with me; soft, I untied
The hands that set the pitfall. I am down,
Yet proud Hualco, girt in armor, fears
To leap into the dark with me, and take
The embrace of my weak arms. Erect and free
He dare not mock me, fallen and in bonds;
For who would tempt the hungry lioness
With the fresh look of blood? Though I were dead,
If he were near, my stagnant life would stir,
And I would close upon immortal power
To 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 eye
Of Truth will never stare into his heart,
And search its sinful secrets, withering off
The leprous scales of perjury wherein
They are peeled up.
"Ye hated, monstrous things,
Whose trade is torment, in your troughs of fire
Rock idly, drawing back your ugly heads
Into their proper caverns: no sharp tooth
Wounds like the stinging of a conscience roused!
Leave him to that: he cannot 'scape it long.
I pray no mercy; beyond mortal strength
Men may be tempted—I am human, too.
If, thirsting in a desert, one draw near
With golden cups of water in his hands,
How hardly do we fill our mouths with dust;
If fever parch us, pleasant is the dew
Of 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 storm
That 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 sign
That tells me he is happy.' That is passed!
Pray, if thou wilt—my lips are dumb of prayer."
Struck with the lovely ruin, ebbing life
Sent 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 grave
To the great sorrow of this death-winged prayer,
And for its sake about this sweet soul wrap
Blest immortality! be piteous, Heaven,
For she is murdered by inconstancy!
Bend softly low, and hear her cruel wrongs
Plead 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 lies
Drowsing 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 times
Some comrade in his last extremity;
But now my heart, unused to such a strait,
Plays the weak woman with me. Fighting once
In the thick front of battle, I beheld
Our grim foe open wide his red-leaved book;
I felt his cold hand touch me; saw him fix
His 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 locks
Hung thick about my brows; life had no chance
I feared to combat with a single hand;
Now I am better spared—old and unfit
For wars or gamesome pastimes—but have lost
The 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, keep
Your 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 dream
That you are that most fair and gentle maid
Who tended once the chief of Tepechan."
I know not if 'tis true, they often say
Of this intenser action of the mind,
That it is madness: she of whom I sing,
Lost, loving Tlaära, in realms apart
From joy or sorrow, made herself a world,
Nor sight she saw nor sound she heard they knew
Who 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 land
In 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 moon
Walked, turning golden furrows on the clouds.
At last was set the night's most dark eclipse,
And yet she saw or seemed to see arise
Tezcuco's capital, within whose walls
What maddening scenes her jealous fancy drew!
The midnight passed, and lifting up her eyes,
From that long vigil, she beheld afar
The awful burning of volcanic fires,
Which seemed as if had fled ten thousand stars
From 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 more
Or fear or hope—the ultimate secret read
Of that too common but dread history.
She only said, how calmly! "The slim reed
That grows beside the most untravelled road,
With its wild blossoms yet may bless the eyes.
Of some chance pilgrim; over the dead tree
Mosses run bright together; in the hedge
The prickles of the thistle's bluish leaves
Hold, all day, spike-like, shining globes of dew;
Even from the stonyest crevice, some stray thorn
May crook its knotty body toward the sun.
And give the ant-hill shelter, but my death
Will 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 time
We were so blest together.' I would leave,
(My frailty and my follies all forgot)
A pleasant memory somewhere. As we look
With pining eyes upon the faded year,
Forgetful of the vexing winds, that took
The green tops of the woods down; picking bare
The 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, I
Fall 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 abysm
Trails itself out in light, the human heart
Wastes all its life in love—that sacrifice
The consummation of diviner bliss
Than he can feel, who, looking from a dream
Sees palpable, his soul's unchambered thoughts
Moving along the ages; calm and bright,
Like mighty wings, spread level. It is well
Earth's fair things fade so soon, else for their sake
Mortals 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 shake
The 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 company
And turn our steps into the dark, alone;
If he were waiting for me I could pass
Death 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, held
By drear enchantments from their demon mates.
Another night-time, and I shall have found
A 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 smooth
These long and heavy tresses, still as bright
As when their wave of beauty bathed the hand
That unto death betrayed me. Nay, 'tis well!
I pray you do not weep; no other fate
Were half so fitting for me. On the grave
Light, 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 time
When 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 star
Divide 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 boughs
Murmurous and cool with shadows, we reach out
Our naked arms, and when the noontide heat
Consumes us, talk of chance, and fate.
Even from the lap of Love we lean away
Like a sick child from a kind nurse's arms,
And petulantly tease for any toy
A hand-breadth out of reach; and from the way
Where hedge and harvest blend, irregular,
Their bordering of green and gold, we turn
And 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 out
Wooing the silence with a silver tongue,
And then our feeble hands let slip the staff,
That helpt our fruitless journey, and our cheeks
Shrivel from smiles and roses; so our sun
Goes, 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 sweeps
The sunshine from the summer, o'er her face
Came the chill shadow, and her grief was done.
Maidens, whose kindling blushes softly burn
Through 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 God
Shall, 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 old
Went writhing down the blue air, weak and bruised
To 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 wings
Upon his troubled soul, as once there came
To 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 transformed
To a black scorpion; but his youth of heart
Dropt off, as from the girdled sapling drops
The unripe fruitage; hope was done with him.
With calm, deliberative eyes, he looked
Upon the kingdoms, parceled at his will;
Over his harvests saw the sun go down,
As though his rising on the morrow brought
The issue of a battle; as one lost,
Who, by the tracks of beasts would find his way
To human habitations, so he strayed
Farther and farther from the rest he sought.
From the sweet altar where the lamp of love
Burned through the temple's twilight, his sad steps
Thenceforward turned aside, and entered in
That dreadful fane, reared sacredly to him
Of the four arrows and blue twisted club,
Whose waist is girdled with a golden snake,
While round his neck a collar of human hearts
Hangs in dread token of his murderous trade.
The green-robed goddess of the fiery wand
That on the manta's fleeces rides at night
Across the sea-waves, beckoned him sometimes,
And he would fain have gone, but that a hand
Like that which she of Katelolco held
Back from the river of Death what time she heard
The dead bones making prophecies of war,
Still held him among mortals; but he saw,
Lovely as life and habited in snow
No youth upon whose forehead shone the cross,
Such as to that pale sleeper gave the power
To lift the cold stone of her sepulchre
And bear her mournful warning to the world.
For his soul's peace he built a rocky bower
And 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 sea
Kneel on the brown bare sand and lay his face
In 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 melodies
To 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 pipes
And rosy jangling shells, mixing with hymns,
Told to their melancholy king what times
To give his homage to the Invisible.
But from the darkening wake of his lost love,
The wild and desolate echoes evermore
Went crying to the pitying arms of God;
And the crushed strings of his complaining lyre
Under the kissing hands of poesy
Thrilled 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 gums
Laid 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.