Montezuma Part 1

Montezuma.

by Hiram Hoyt Richmond.

ARGUMENT OF THE POEM.

From the moment of my earliest acquaintance with Colonial History, I have felt all the pressure of a task laid upon me, tightening its grasp as I reached maturer years; that of an attempt to rescue the Aztecs from their letterless and mythical position in history, to the position which their possibilities at least argue for them; and this feeling has been far less the outgrowth of the enthusiasm awakened for the Aztecs, as the indignation felt at the whole conduct of the Spanish Conquest.

Realizing the gravity of the task, I have been led to carefully weigh and investigate the different theories advanced as to the origin of the Aztecs, and to adopt the argument of the poem as the best ground on which to unite the Sun Wors.h.i.+p of the East with the Mythology of of the West.

Reverently, and with a full realization of how great must ever be the distance between the actual work and the ideal of my early inspiration, I lay the gathered chaplet at the shrine of old Chapultepec, and only regret that the fruiting should have fallen so far short of the promise of its blooming.

To Hubert Howe Bancroft the living, and W. H. Prescott the dead, differing as they do in some very material respects, yet essentially the same in spirit, I wish to record my indebtedness for their admirable and exhaustive works that have induced to a final effort the poem of which this is prefatory.

Some years since, I found in an abridged history of the United States, a brief outline that led me back to the Dispersal at s.h.i.+nar (certainly a safe location for a speculative beginning) for the origin of the Aztec race.

It occurs to me now, with a shade of the ludicrous, that if safety were the all-important thing in the premises, I might have gone back a step farther to the figs and pomegranites of Eden, and prayed for the shade of Adam to cover the exotic which I have humbly tried to rescue from what seems to me to be an undeserved obscurity. The careful a.n.a.logies drawn between Egypt and the Aztecs by both Prescott and Bancroft could be better met by locating the origin at s.h.i.+nar than at any other point, as it takes us back to a date where we may consistently locate the Shepherd Kings and the overrunning of Mizraim by them, a part of Egypt's early history which is outlined (more or less briefly) by nearly all early historians.

As to the initial period of Sun Wors.h.i.+p and its origin, I could of necessity have but little aid, and if I have seemed a little too speculative, I have only this apology: The prodigy of Egypt's prehistoric development, and the manufacture of gla.s.s, antedating historic research. It needs no great imaginative tension to crown some incipient philosopher not only with the discovery of gla.s.s, but, that in its proper shape, it could be made to concentrate the solar rays, and produce fire; and at that day and age, what possible superst.i.tions might result from these discoveries!

After the re-establishment of the Mizraim descent, and the consequent expulsion of the "Sons of Lud," the line of their journey is the natural outgrowth of their religious fanaticism. They know that India and the far East are inhabited, and they seek the uninhabited track for their exit.

The Mound Builders seem to be historic cousins of the Aztecs, certainly the superiors of the aborigines of the North and Middle Atlantic.

The expulsion of the Mound Builders will admit of many theories, and I have simply adopted the one that occurred to me as consistent with the Christian inspiration of all great events.

The settlement of Mexico by the Aztecs, (as a branch of the Mound Builders) follows naturally in the wake of previous events, and the chain is thus made complete, with no serious hazard to its consistency as merely speculative drama, leading up to what is plainly historical.

I have striven to be historically consistent, following the letter of events closely, taking conjectural ground in but few instances.

If I have seemed to be censorious, even to rancor at times, I have only given vent to the repressed indignation of Prescott and other authors on the subject of the Spanish Conquest.

The only possible justification for the excesses of Cortez and his adherents, is the age in which the Conquest took place; and those who seek to justify it in this way, point to the opening of the present century, and to Napoleon, decoying the imbecile king and the weak Asturias into abdication and banishment to make room for his brother Joseph. This is a plague-mark upon the present century, and though a plain case of retributive justice through the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children, still the fact remains that the attempt to bring _right_ of any multiple of wrongs, must always record a failure.

A sufficient answer to the lat.i.tude of the age, is the fact that a corresponding age gave us Plymouth, and not long after Penn's colony; nor can the Spaniards claim the same justification for excesses as these coincident colonists, all of whom had felt the lash of religious intolerance. The Spanish Conquest, antedating the divisions that followed the reformation, has no such covert for their l.u.s.tful excrescences.

Any system of religious ethics that severs human responsibility from the domain of conscience, and furnishes a market for the indulgences that cover all the excesses of the body politic, cannot be expected to bring forth the best of fruit from a bloom so blighted by human l.u.s.t, and so blackened by human selfishness.

If, amid all of their intolerance and deceit, they had respected the homely records and the grotesque landmarks of the nation they destroyed, the cavaliers might have shown them as a slight palliation, and at once furnished the historian the shadow of justification for their abuses; but the mental caste that could adopt any, and every device of deception and treachery to accomplish its ends, threw itself at once into the arms of a priestcraft, if possible more implacable than themselves; and obedient to their demands, tore down their landmarks, and ground their records to powder.

Surely, there is no fanaticism like religious fanaticism, and no licentiousness like that of the unbridled devotee of the Church.

Finally, as a whole, I feel confident that my effort will not fail to create food for thought, and eventually justify the effort which called it forth. To a nature partially Huguenot in its origin, and more so in sympathy and inclination, I have tried to add the temperate element that would impart freedom from undue prejudice and pa.s.sion; but as the work is of necessity vindicatory on the one hand, and repressive on the other, I have been compelled to use good, plain Saxon words in the closing pages, justified only by the verity of their signification.

The body of the work is given in decimeters, varying in only a few cases where the expression seemed to require a different form.

I would rather not close these already extended remarks without recording my testimony, with that of others, of the positive pleasure experienced both in the progress and completion of a work of this character; and if I shall have been as fortunate in securing and retaining an auditory, I shall be twice blessed; for our highest ambition should ever be that of contributing to the happiness of others.

The reward of earnest labor, conscientiously performed, is the prize only _once_ exceeded in the economy of things, and that _once_ beyond the ken of our divulgence; yet, may we not hope that there is no actual severance between the earthly type and the heavenly reality, that the crown honestly won, and the prize worthily gained on earth, may both, retaining their semblance, the more perfectly glow in the clearer atmosphere of heaven.

H. H. R.

MONTEZUMA.

PART FIRST.

EGYPT.

THE DISPERSAL AT s.h.i.+NAR.

As mariner upon the rocky sea, Without a compa.s.s, helm, or heavenly hope, A part of Earth's great ancestry to be Upon the plains of s.h.i.+nar; and they grope In nature's darkness; they have lost the way That leadeth to the Father, and can find No clue of that great Presence, once their stay, And still as near; but sin doth make us blind, And when it fastens on the soul, the Father fades away.

How wholly lost, when man cannot descry One token of his Maker in the soul-- One step remains, the animal must die; But death has superseded its control, Since the immortal "Ego" is no more, The spirit gone from its companion, dust-- The ashes are but animate in vain When love, and light, have given place to l.u.s.t And conscience gives no puncture for its pain.

Thus were they gathered, in this day far gone, So near the causeway of the almighty past, That retrospect brings close, the thought of G.o.d-- We wonder that a cloud could overcast, So primitive a people, that the Shepherd's voice Should leave no lingering echo, for the ear, so tokened and so choice.

And they would build a city, and a tower Whose top would reach the very verge of Heaven;-- The puniest arm, is puissent in power, When to its grasp supernal aid is given; But muscles may, like cordage, swell the arm, And arteries, like rills of mountains flow.

Weak is the blood that breakers them to harm,-- The fires of pa.s.sion but a moment glow.

They, as the infants play upon the rim Of ancient Ocean, had been rocked to sleep In the bare arms of Nature; she would trim Her lamps for them, and patient vigil keep Upon their slumbers; and Heaven, to them, Was but a brilliant, close-spread canopy, Or crystal dome, a sort of diadem Just out of easy reach, and they could see No reason why they might not build a tower Would intercept it; and their foolish pride Supposed this little caprice of the hour, Through all the after age, would witness of their power.

They made them bricks, and steadily they reared The spiral column heavenward; the Great Eye Bent vigilantly on them, as they neared The upper ether, silent as the sky Draws round its garniture; into each soul Crept the first rootlets of an unknown tongue; Each household head placed under his control The elements of intercourse, first flung Together by the great Teacher; just before When they had dropped from their exulting hands The rough-made tools; they closed forevermore Their mutual labor, though in other lands They could resume their use, this was the last Of the poor monument that they had reared-- The workmen stand in wonderment aghast, Though they had wrought together, and had cheered Each other in their task, each quivering lip Breathed but confusion to the other's ears, No more from common cup of thought they sip, But forced to strangerhood for many, many years.

In what a school was fas.h.i.+oned our first thought.

How the poor soul is dumbed, and quivering, When we conceive what the Great Master wrought.

How are we littled, what a nameless thing "Is man, that thou art mindful" thus "of him."

Thou settest up, and pullest down, and we-- Our hearts are hushed, our vision is made dim-- Mites in the balance of imponderate destiny.

A camp in Central India, 'neath the palms, And where the lap of nature is so full, That all the world may beggar it of alms And drink of its repletion; a mere tool Of hungry Kingdoms, thirsty Dynasties-- The finger-tips of Alexander's arm-- The plethorite of the Augustan age-- The gilt that margins all the tapestries Down through middle ages; and the charm That lends a mellow fragrance to the page Of her, the Island Queen, whose arm meets arm In the embrace of earth, her borders refuge from avenging harm.

A journey into Egypt, with their flocks before, And peaceful conquests back, an opening door To vast historic truths, a Niobe Moaning her children's travail in advance, A restless nomad people, like the sea, Stirred by involuntary force, whose billows dance To music of the spheres, stern Autocrat, and yet a slave to its own mastery.

SOJOURN IN EGYPT.

O Egypt! how shall we approach thy face?

How steal from thy dumb lips one sc.r.a.p of song?

Thou stand'st alone, and sendest from thy place One word, that human lips have shaped for thee, To seal thy mighty arch with "mystery."