Montezuma Part 4

The tambour' is silent, O G.o.d of the Nile!

The harp has been hung in acacian shade.

We are bowed to the earth, we are broken and bent, And the blade of our fathers in dust has been laid.

We came, as the simoom creeps over the plain; We came, as the tiger its covert forsakes; As the hurricane brushes the dust from the brakes; As the lightning leaps out and the thunder-G.o.d shakes.

We are shorn of our strength as with plague we are smote; The axe has been wrenched from the hands that are brawn, And the arms whose strong sinews till now were unbent Have been broken as brittles; our prowess is gone.

O! thou bright s.h.i.+ning G.o.d! with thy scintles of gold; If thy children have gathered the glow of thy face, If thy kisses, ere warmed to the lips that are cold, O we pray! let us feel thy impa.s.sioned embrace.

We are journeying forth to the cradle of morn, Where thy lids feel the weight of their slumbering still; We would kneel at thy bed where the seasons are born, And learn from thy lips the whole law of thy will.

Have we sinned in thy sight? have we slackened our pace?

Are we paying the forfeit in wormwood of shame?

We draw nearer to thee, and our lives we would place In the hands of the Maker, that out of thy flame

We may gather that fire that shall glow with thy love; And will never grow dim through the future of years, That shall make us like thee, and our fealty prove 'Till we learn to forget this dark trackhood of tears.

As we turn to the East, wilt thou smile on our way?

Wilt thou lessen the distance between us and thee?

Or our hearts remain hungry, the shadow still stay With its wizard arm lifted to smite as we flee.

We doubt thee no longer--we know thou wilt aid; We turn to the path where thy morning rays s.h.i.+ne; We will seek thy first footfall, and all unafraid, We feel thee, we love thee, we know we are thine.

We leave the old life, with the graves of our kin, We turn from the sunset of dampness and death, We turn where the light with its G.o.d doth begin, And the praise of the day-king embalms every breath;

Where the sun slakes his thirst with the dew of the flowers, Where the night flees before him far into the west, Where the honey-dew clings to the fruit-laden hours, Where the soul sets its table, with Joy as its guest.

So does our faith stand out against our grief; So does our hope grow up into belief.

One G.o.d? Yes, Father, Thou! and only One.

We praise thee; yet, our praise is only done, When we extol thee for the gift of faith.

Not every one can name thee; but each breath May be enladen with the thought of praise And all adore thy attributes--the ways That they adore thee are not always thine; Yet, do they bend to thy great thoroughfare and s.h.i.+ne With light from the Eternal throne; 'tis well, Nor otherwise than good--it can but swell The choral of thy praise; and in the end These thousand thoughts of Deity, in thee, not fail to blend.

THE JOURNEY.

O thou! who charmed the demons in the breast Of Saul, and set the universal voice Of all the earth to thy unflagging song; Thou royal shepherd! bend for us across The bridge of ages thy leant lips, and pour The echo of thy music on our souls.

And Thou of Nazareth! whose very life Was as the cadence of a well-strung harp, Thyself the instrument, upon whose strings, Ten thousand symphonies are left entranced; Pour in the empty vial of our verse, Some of thy soul of music, and let s.h.i.+ne Through every darkened crevice of the heart, Rays of celestial suns.h.i.+ne. Not in vain Our humble dalliance, if thou set the charm Of thine approval. Let our song be praise And devotate our hands, that there be left No tissue, but is animate of Thee!

The seas reach out to clasp each other's hands, The greater and the less, and leap the sands That tear in two their waters; but not so She of the Nile; her rights will not forego.

The hand that rocks the crib of empire holds A charm, that locks the East and West in one The track of nations is her beaten path, And undisputed, till the earth be done.

Man may disturb it, but the hand of G.o.d Has placed a thousand tokens on this sod.

The flocks are gathered, and the flight began, Old Uri and attendants in the van; The portents were of good as far as seen, Each breast a shrine of hope; thus early man Gave little time to sorrow--after years Were left for its fruition; light of heart, These early-planted germlets of the earth, Took their reverses in the better part Of hardihood; they had thus early learned, That in the chafe of fortune there is gain; That scars are coronets, though they be burned Deep in the brow of care; each gem a pain.

Our philosophic age with heavy draught, Drinks deep in phantasies, but fails to learn The wiser lesson of this early craft, To catch the wheel of fortune with each turn.

East over Syria they bent their steps, Meeting Euphrates many leagues above Where Babylon since molded into form Her mystical proportions; and so strove Persistently the mastery of earth.

Crossing the Tigris but a span below, Where Taurus from his fountains feeds the stream, They traverse Persia with its after-glow Of conquest; where Ispahan gave touch, To chords that deify the voice of song, And mellow through the ages, if so much As but an echo would inspire the tongue, With that enchantment, that rolls down the course Of her great history. We seek in vain Another Cyrus, or another force Of Scripture fulfillment, with lesser pain, And Time's repleted garner has no riper grain.

Still East they cross the Amoo, and above Where now, Bokhara's languor and repose Invites the Sclavic hordes in summer quest Of forage. And Belor, giant like, still throws Its shadow o'er the landscape; and the Koosh Shortens the noon of summer, from the South; A thousand sparkling torrents downward rush, And pour their waste of waters in the mouth Of Indus. They cross where Belor melts its snow, To placid Cashgar's arms, sending below A current to the waste of farther Nor.

They stand on Cobis' southern girt, and drink The final retrospective of the West; And keep the gloomy borders to the brink Of far-off Koulon, where the Argoon lends Its mite of wastage to the vast Amour; And the impetuous s.h.i.+lka, swiftly sends Its tribute to the master of Mantchoor.

One winter they had spent upon the way, Within the vale of Cashgar, where the flocks Found generous herbage; but they could not stay Longer than opening spring, when from the rocks And pa.s.ses of the Koosh, a savage tribe Came fiercely on them; and again the fire From Uri's sacred pebble, as a bribe Saved them from ruin, and the warlike ire Of Lama's devotees, for even then On upper Ind, his wors.h.i.+p had begun; But superst.i.tion, ranks us all as men, And mystery doth mold us into one.

The Argoon and the s.h.i.+lka pa.s.sed; they keep Their steady march, down Armour's limpid tide.

Yet summer wastes to autumn. Seasons creep So noiselessly, that our souls are open wide, If we set watch upon them; unaware They find us napping, in our wakeful age; And how much more, in the unrisen sun Of ancient man! We wonder that the page Is not more blurred and blotted in the years That are far gone, when knowledge only bubbled up through tears.

A Winter on the Amour near the sea; The Frost King strokes his heavy beard in glee, In surfeit of his triumph, o'er the foe That dares invade his borders; and the snow Scatters its fleecy fullness o'er the land, Hiding the face of Nature with its hand So cold and clasping. O 'tis very hard!

To see familiar faces pa.s.s the ward Of our immediate contact, and the earth Draw back into its arms, with tightening girth Our loved ones. But 'tis a heavier lot To see our mother Earth, whose faithful breast Has never failed to aid; so chilled in death That it cannot respond, though it be rest, Recuperent and needful; still the same When we are starving for its warm caress, And cannot spare its nursing, when our claim Is mortal, and we feel the strong hand press Our vitals; and we labor for our breath; And Famine lends its wizard hand, to fill the tooth of death.

Old Uri vainly calls the s.h.i.+ning G.o.d; Though it may light his altar, still the flame Is but a weakling; and the weary host Were wrangling at his impotence, and tame His efforts to a.s.suage them. He had taught His followers of a near approach; the sun Seemed coy of his endeavors, for the thought Of zone or solstice, had not then begun, And Winter was their time of penance, when Their G.o.d rode low, and frowned him out of sight.

They offered for his anger many gifts, And set their watchmen to outwake the night.

In question of his rising. Why should he Keep so much closer the horizon's rim When they were in his quest, and sought the verge Of farthest empire, in their reach of him?

O empty arms! and ever reaching out, Fold in the blessings that your hands enclose.

There is nor reason, nor excuse for doubt, The river of G.o.d's love so near you flows.

Your very feet are on the water's brink, His very arms are all around you thrown, You touch him in your timidness, and shrink To his embraces; no human soul was ever yet alone.

They settle down to Winter, and their flocks Must furnish sustenance, until the sun Shall break their penance, and embrown the locks Of the o'ergristled seasons; and this won, They counsel further movement. Uri speaks: "Sons of the Summer G.o.d, I little thought When we set out from Egypt, that our feet Would be thus bruised and bled; but it is well.

We learn the lesson of our latent sin; This trial of our faith will make us whole, If we but draw the diamond out of it.

We have not vainly trod the heavy press Of our affliction, if we firmly breast The waters. I have kept faithful watch-- We are but self-styled lords, and forfeit much Of our a.s.serted masterhood; the birds Make many less mistakes--we used to note The flight of waterfowl in Egypt. Why Should we not learn their wisdom in this clime?

Before the sun sank low, and Winter came (Led by a providence that makes all things To minister our wants), I watched the birds, And many, turned to East, across the sea.

We lose our way sometimes, they never do; They are much closer children to the sun Than we, by their dependence--we need help As much as any feathered wingster does-- And yet we push it back, when we might reach And find a steady hand. Let us go to And make us s.h.i.+ps; that when the Spring Shall beckon back to life the dormant earth, And all the birds turn back in countermarch, We fly against their flight, and reach the clime From whence the sun has warned them to return To this cold country of the nether earth.

"Behold! these rugged trees stand stout for us, And ready for our architrave; and we Were better wont to labor than to dole Our time in murmurs at our fate. Up! up!

And do! and though we suffer overmuch, Our labor shall not vainly mock at us.

Even old Kohen saw a journey South, When he did burn our eyes, as he went up, And he saw fat and plenty in the land Where his prophetic eye did cast our lot; And we will not mistrust what leads to light, Though it be lifted in a demon's hand."

The forests gave to them their virgin palms, And they did rudely shape them into crafts; Made ready for the flood, when the warm sun Should waken nature with enlivening draughts; But Spring wore into Summer, ere the birds Gave the unspoken pledge of their return.

The sun, still coy, refused to climb as high As it had done in Egypt; still they burn With new-born hope, as they float down to sea, And, moving counter to their winged friends, Cross to Lopatka, where they only wait Replenishment, which nature always sends, Where faith is instinct as in lower life, (The birds teach providence, without a chance,) And so they wander on, to the Aleutes; Pa.s.sing and calling, as they still advance, They reach to where Alaska strikes the sea, In severance to meet them. They kept on, Feeding on eggs of seabirds, and the meats That everywhere supplied them. They have gone So far on Nature's very track, and now A narrow river beckons their research, And they pa.s.s upward, till a mountain range Confronts their pa.s.sage, like a royal perch From which the G.o.ds might frown their hardihood, For this intrusion of another world.

But they have battled with the plague and flood; And though Olympus all his thunders hurled, They had not turned; they saw the earnest need Of pus.h.i.+ng forward ere the sun turned back, And so they crossed to where the eastern slope, Feeds the McKenzie. Here an easy track Leads down and cuts the stronger range in two, A little while among its shadows grope, When the broad prospect opened to their view.

They follow the receding sun in hope, Still bearing to the east their steady trend, Hoping to win their G.o.d to close embrace; And morn and eve around their altars bend In thankfulness, that they still see his face.

Through many valleys, virgin to their sight, And many lakes, whose bosoms never stirred To man, the weak pretender of G.o.d's might; But nature spreads her happy hearth with beast and flower and bird.

PART SECOND.

AZTLAN.

THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

Father of Waters! Nilus of the West!

Thou holdst thy secrets from the sons of men; A knowledge of the past which none would wrest Or wish to circ.u.mscribe with tongue or pen To the weak bonds of history; but rather stand With old De Soto on thy banks, and reverence the hand That drew the fetters from thy limbs, and set thee first at birth, On thy unmuzzled pilgrimage, without a peer on earth.

Better thy unbroke seal, if it would teach The ponderous worm of destiny, called man; How great things may be hidden from his reach, And mighty things be silent, that his span Is but a hand-breadth to the great unknown, A thistle-down, before the breezes blown, That silent and unseen G.o.d turns the mighty mill, And on the brow of giant force he writes his words, "Be still."

The possibles of time, are all thine own.

Thou hast not reared thy monuments of stone To overtop the pyramids, yet wrought In shapely mounds, thy sculpturehood, and caught From flying Time, the l.u.s.tre of his wing, Which gives the semblance of perpetual Spring To thy vast lap of luxuries; in thee (Since man first pinioned thee to history) Is found the acme of a world's desire.