DEATH OF MONTEZUMA.
One sad, sad task, awaits my faltering pen,And I have done. One flower uponhisgrave,Who in his dying could, alas! not saveHis country from the vulturous maw of men.They played upon the monarch with their arts,Till he became a captive in their hands;It was consistent with theirChristianheartsThat their good host should follow their commands.They said theirChristianlord across the seaMust have his treasure for theirChristianuse.All this was bitter, yet, he did agree,And bent a patient knee to their abuse.They struck their temples, and the red, right handOf Aztlan rose upon them. They could bearTo see their monarch littled, and their landMade tribute to a stranger; but, bewareStern warriors of Castile! touch not their gods.The hearts of Aztlan are but human hearts,And at some shrine the whole creation nods;Invade the sanctum, and the whole man starts.Las Casas[S]would have won them with his love—The potent key that opens every gate.Let not deceit claim sanction from above;It may assist upon the wheels of fate,But what Spain offered through such legateesWas worse than powder on the bated flame.To gather fruit from such ill-freighted trees,Was worse than stealing nightmare from a dream.In Christ's good name they stole the monarch's gold;They changed the name of Christ to treachery;They gathered all the spoils their hands could hold,And pointed to their Master on the tree.Their Master? No! since Lucifer was hurledDown from the shining chambers of the justTo vent his spleen upon a new-made world,He never had a worthier task in trust,Than that he gave to Spain's inglorious knights,To rob this people of their vested rights.
The people gather at the palace gates,And vengeance writes itself upon each face;Their generosity no longer waits,They spit upon, and spurn the outraged place.It harbors those who wrote themselves as knavesUpon the pliant tablets of their lives,And now the incensed nation only cravesDeliverance for their children and their wives.They know the belching cannon of the knightsWill make sad havoc in their stately host;They know that Spain and Fate to-day unite;They know, if fortune fails them, all is lost;But they can bear no longer to be torn,And swear by all the gods to pluck this thorn.The Spaniards see their perfidy, too late;And call great Montezuma to the gate."Why are my people here to-day in arms?These stranger friends are still my welcome guests;They soon will turn them backward to their homes.Shall we raise hands against great Quetzalcoatl?We fight against the gods? Lay down your arms!Go to your homes, and all shall yet be well,And peace shall reign in all Tenochtitlan[T]!"They bent before him reverently at first.It was a moment—then their anger burst:"Base Aztec! woman! coward! sneaking slave!The whites have made a puppet of your name!Talk not of fighting 'gainst our honored gods;We soil their sacred robes if we submit!"A cloud of stones and arrows flew the air;And Montezuma fell a victim oftheirrage andhisdespair.His heart had broke when he beheld the throng,For he was burning with his country's wrong;And when the missiles smote his fevered crest,His very soul was reaching out for rest.Theyonly helped to roll the burden off,So long imprinted on his saddened face—It wastoomuch to hear his people scoff—He fell; and they removed him from the place.He never rose again, nor wished to rise;He made no effort to outlive his land;He felthisweakness, and he heardhercries;He sawhersinking withhiswasting sand.He knew his enemies had stole the garbOf gods to fasten on him their deceit;That they had stung the nation with their barb,And he would not survive its sore defeat.He felt their scoffings were deserved of him,For he should gathered wisdom with his years;He saw his weakness when his sight was dim,And poured his wasting moments out in tears.
They called the Priest to shrive him for his death—The worthy Monk Olmedo[U]takes his palms;It is in vain; his very latest breathRepulses all their uninvited alms.He dies an Aztec—honor to his name!And spurns the symbols that have crushed him down.What mockery when he is all aflameWith their abuses! Give him back his crown,His country's honor, and its hard-earned gold.But force no wormwood to his fevered lips;His hand is pulseless, and will soon be cold;His life was shadow; and his death—eclipse.
Great are the consolations of the cross—The Father-Son of Calvary, and time.Their glory compensates a kingdom's loss;But piety must not be wed to crime.Did all the roses blossom from the cross,And all the thorns grow out upon the waste?Then were the metal guarded from the dross,And every crust be suited to our taste;But bitter-sweet is all the book of life,And thorns and roses crowd the tangled way;And good and evil, always, are at strife—Night always dogs the footsteps of the day.Yet "figs cannot be gathered from the thorn,"Nor "grapes from thistles," says the patient Lord—One great, good life, like a new angel born,Is the most potent sermon ever heard.The hands that smote the Monarch in the faceDid honor to his ashes, cold and dead.Their anger was rubbed out, and not a traceWas left, as with their slow and measured treadThey bore his sacred ashes to the tombWithin the walls of old Chapultepec,Where stately trees, and flowers perennial bloom,And, all the pulses of their lives in check,Bow down to kiss the shrine of memory.The sacred hush of death comes none too oftTo still the fevered brain and make us free—It is a gentle hand, and moves so softThat it compensates all our miseryBy chaining all the lions of our lifeAnd placing durance on the throbbing drumThat marshals us to earth's unpitying strife.How should we reverence the hand that strikes our passions dumb!Cortez and Montezuma; Aztlan, Spain—The very mingling of these words is pain.The one, bold, cold, unscrupulous and brave,And making of each obstacle a slave;Seekinghisglory in the name of Christ,To gain his ends unfaithful to each tryst.—The fault is with the ethics of his race,Which justify the means foranyend,And leave the moral aspect without place,And to the foulest acts their ready sanction lend.The thought of holding man to his account,And throwing merit against circumstance,Of cleansing souls at one great common fount,Of holding out to man an equal chance—These things were not considered in the least.The glory of himself and Spain were first;All the excesses pardoned by the PriestWeaned the poor soul from any moral thirst.A golden apple trembled on the limb,And he must pluck it, at whatever cost.What matter whose?—it should belong to him;It was too tempting, and must not be lost:The wall that lay before it must be scaled,The owner of the field must be destroyed,And if hisprowess, in the effort failed,Deceitandtreacherymust be employed.The unbridled passions of the human soulLinked with the crucifix in his emprise.The lion, loosened and in full control—The semblance of the Lamb to Aztlan's eyes:A faithful offspring of the Papish loins,The features of the Church in duplicate,Though baser metals pass for golden coins,Only earth's charity can make brave Cortez great.But Montezuma conquers all our thought—Tenochtitlan and old Chapultepec.No greener shrine for memory can be sought;The heart and conscience both alike bedeckThe unfading spectre of a soul sincere,Who tugged at destiny against the dark—The hand, unconscious, drops its laurels here.His brown hands could not helm the fateful barkAgainst the baleful breakers of old Spain;Yet, whoisproof against the foils of men.His life is but a psalmody of pain.What soul unmoved can touch it with the pen?The link that bound the old world with the new,With pure and patient hands, might been upturned,And every missing chapter brought toviewBy Clio gathered, and again inurnedIn history's cloister; Egypt and AztlanStrike palms upon the bridges of the years;But Spain denies the privilege to man,And fills the vacuum with a nation's tears.O Monarch of the fading, mighty past!Great Montezuma! we are wed to thee.Back of thy name the ocean is so vastThat we can only write—Eternity,And leave the secret in thy broken breast.We would that we could taken thy warm palm,Held out in welcome from the mellow West,And poured upon thy stricken life the balmOf real enlightenment; and point thee back,Over the ridges of the years, to God;To where your people lost the beaten track,And ever afterward were left to plod.Those great sad eyes, once filled with light from Heaven,Would shone like diamonds when they found the way,And every fibre of thy nature strivenTo turn thy nation's darkness into day.Alas! 'tis vain! we beat the empty air.Our tears are mingled with thy wasting breath;Weallare torn with thy warm heart's despair,And mourn with Aztlan at thy fateful death.
CONCLUSION.
From sire to son the stern bequeathment fallsOf some misguided action in the past,And, though our nature with the victim callsAnd we are smitten with his overcast,Still are we weak against the wheels of fate,Which leaves the pensioner thus desolate.The by-ways of the father must turn backSometime upon the highway that he left;Though dark and sinuous may be the track,And life of all its luster be bereft,Still hangs the heavy impulse on the soul,Unsatisfied, till it shall reach its goal.The destiny was hard that brought proud SpainUpon the fading summerland of gold;Its retribution is no less a pain;The grip of fate, so pulseless and so cold,Brings back the shudder to the human heart;Humanity is wounded witheachpartThat feels the puncture of her cruel blade.Nor is the censure less upon the handThat strikessohard to force the debt thus paid.The tender conquest of some heathen landThe brightest jewel is, of any crown—God never licensed human hand to strike a foe when down.When Spain's recruited army turned them backTo glut their ire on Guatamozin's head,There never was a deeper furrowed track,More thickly cindered with the myriad dead;And when at last his bloody sceptre fell,Tenochtitlan was likest to a hell.The brave barbarian was put to rackTo force divulgence of his scattered gold.—Is there a garment of a deeper black,To cover up the fingers that could holdSuch hellish orgies after all the past?The palm is thine, O Spain! and hold it to the last!Yet one more turn upon the screw of time:Thy red, right hand must slay this waif of fate;And thou must put the climax to the crime,And crush the heart thou has made desolate.Enough! thou art the acme of the earth—May God's great pity ever spare thy duplicated birth!No, no, not Spain!herbetter angel waits,Andhasbeen waiting all these weary yearsFor Castellar to open wide her gates,That she may wash her garments with her tears;But priestcraft, Rome, or demon, all the same—That makes a desert of her rich champaign;And sends her forth through history, so tame.It is, her evil genius; but it is not Spain.
As Kohen prophesied, their race was run—Their error cleaved upon them as a curse;The fading phalanx of the Summer sunHas crossed the borders of the universe.We only catch the shadow of their flight;They pass out with the sunset into night.
I may properly place "Malinche" as supplementary to "Montezuma," as dealing with characters coincident to, and cotemporaneous with those concerned in the "Conquest," and also as covering a period subsequent to, and immediately succeeding the Conquest.
To the student of history, Malinche (in her position of interpreter during the entire period of the Conquest) presents at once so much that is unique and charming, and yet such a sad commentary on the criminal practices of the sixteenth as well as the nineteenth centuries, that I have often wondered that a stronger and more practiced hand has not ere this claimed the privilege of championship.
According to Prescott, she was born in the town of Painnalla, Province of Coatzacualco, in the southeastern extremity of what is now Mexico; that she was the daughter of a Cacique (a sort of provincial Governor) and prospective heiress to large estates; that after the death of her father, her mother, with indecent haste, forms another union, and in time presents the stepfather with a son; that they jointly combine to be rid of Malinche,whom they sell to itinerant traders; and, to cover their device, they pretend that she is sick and use the child of a servant for their criminal pantomime; the child dies, thus completing the deception, except the hypocritical mourning to which this unnatural mother is said to have been equal.
Malinche is sold by the traders to the Cacique of Tabasco, and reaches maturity about the time of the Conquest. She seems to have been a favorite in the house of the Cacique, which would indicate that he had become acquainted with her origin, and after the surrender of the town to Cortez, she is one of the twenty female slaves presented to the Conqueror and his allies.
Either from enlarged opportunities or her natural aptness, and probably both, she is found by Cortez to be just the person he needs for interpreter. Mutual attraction leads them into the closest relations, and it is but just to Malinche to state that there is no indication of her knowledge of the Conqueror's wife in Cuba, until she arrives at the Capitol. There is also nothing to indicate more than a momentary estrangement between Malinche and Catalina.
Catalina lived but about three months after her arrival at Mexico; and it seems that Malinche assumes the same relations as before, when Cortez journeys South, where in time they reach the precincts of the maiden's nativity, and she meets her mother, after all the years of their cruel separation. Here the beautiful sincerity of the Christianityshe had espoused, shines forth as she quiets her mother's fears, and professes to doubt her mother's original intent to sell her. She loads her mother with jewels and seems to cherish no feeling not consistent with the warmest relations of daughter and mother.
The statement soon after is, that Cortez presents her to Don Xamarillo with all the sanction of marriage, and he enriches her with some of the largest estates in her native province; and there the historic account closes. Incidentally, it is mentioned that a son was born during the period of thisaffaire ducœur.
I stated that the historic account closes here, but M. Charny and others enlarge on the traditionary feeling of South Eastern Mexico, and if we may credit his statements (and many times tradition carries more heart and more of the essential elements of truth in it than the cold pencil of history), Malinche is so woven into the social structure as to become almost the patron saint of that part of the country.
And Prescott (rather inclined to the fruit than the blossom of history) speaks of Malinche as being reverently held by the Aztec descendants as the guardian angel of Chapultepec.
I have endeavored thus to present the salient features of this part of the historic drama, adding and enlarging only as it became necessary to connect the events and do justice to the fair subject of the endeavor; and whatever criticism may be offered, I can, without hesitancy, claimthe credit of candor and a desire to eliminate from all the facts of the case the plain, unvarnished truth.
I began at first to write the idyl in nine-syllabic measure, but soon found myself cramped in expression, and in recopying I have thrown off restraint and used the double terminal with both nine and ten syllables, having no desire and finding no occasion to use the eight syllable measure which Longfellow has so immortalized in the "Song of Hiawatha."
The sacred relations of man and wife, like those of any othersacramententered into voluntarily, are no less binding in thespiritthan in theletterof the law; and it is a gratifying truth that the statutes of many of the States of the Union are being so remodeled as to recognize thefact, rather than theformof marriage; and the tendency is, certainly toward the correction of many abuses, as leading to a more enlarged knowledge of social responsibilities.
As long as the sad story of Malinche has a present application, and may be said to be the perspective of the grossly distorted foreground of our social structure, so long will its rehearsal have its use in the world; and I only regret that a stronger hand and a more perfect pen might not have been loaned to its portrayal.
H. H. Richmond.
Old Painnalla of Coat-za-cual-co,Passing down the road of the "Conquest,"Through the silent portals of Lethe,Was greatest of Mexican hamlets;The birthplace of brown-eyed Malinche,Whom the Spaniards call Dona Marina;And the noble Cacique, great Tezpitla,With his shrew of a wife, Zunaga—All are names deserving of story,For they cling to the garment of greatness.A daughter is born to Zunaga,And the worthy Cacique Tezpitla,Though he warms to the little stranger,Had hoped that the gods would have givenA son and Cacique for the province.They named their young daughter Malinche;The priest called the gods to protect her,And sprinkled her brow and her bosomWith water, the purest of emblems;Commends her to Tez-cat-li-po-ca,The soul of the earth and the heavens;To Quet-zal-coatl, god of the harvest;And at all the shrines with their homage,They offered the richest of jewels.Tezpitla soon sleeps with his fathers,And Malinche, too young to have known him,Has hardly begun with her prattle,Ere he passes away to the sunset,To the palace of gold Tonatu',Where his warriors had gone on before himTo their rest, in the dazzling chambersThat shine from the face of the day god.Zunaga a little while murmurs,And mourns at the chieftain's departure,When Mohotzin, a friend of Tezpitla(Who had shared oft times in his battlesAnd sat many times at his table),In sympathy visits the widow;And his sympathy turns to wooing,His wooing and winning are easy.For Zunaga (the name of the faithless)Yields a ready ear to his sighing,And pity is parent of loving.The bride takes the place of the widow,And the funeral leads to the wedding.A son is soon born to Mohotzin,And the sire with the faithless Zunaga,Bend their heads to the hurt of the helpless,To disherit the artless daughter;She sends up inquisitive glances,To the guilty eyes of her parents.Thus the perfect faith of our childhood,Stands to smite at the evil endeavor,Yet how is it cruelly woundedBy the cunning hand of its kindred!She is sold as a slave to the merchants,Whose itinerant traffic encountersThis cruel and conscienceless couple.Scarcely five years the miniature maiden,When decoyed from her favorite pastimes,Under guise of a frolicsome journey;She is hurried away into bondage,To gain the estate for her brother.And all this is done under shadowTo cover the basest of actions.Malinche is said to be dying,The mother is bent at the bedside,Where is laid the child of a servant;It dies, to complete the deception,And Zunaga bewails, as is fittingIn well painted actions, the daughter.The funeral pageant is greaterThan the one attending Tezpitla;And thus, did the misnomered motherStrive to hide the print of her sinning.How fares it with bonnie Malinche,Thus stung in the morn of her childhood?The merchants have gone to Tabasco,The slaves are the bearers of burden,The maid is thus borne from her kindred.She, too young to plead for ransom,Little heeds the force of her venture;And in time, they have traversed the river,And have reached the town of Tabasco.The merchants immured in their traffic,Sell the maid to a wealthy landlord,The worthy Cacique of the province.Thus cruelly shorn of her birthright,Malinche grows up as a servantIn the house of this wealthy master,The playmate and charm of his children.She gathers the boon of contentmentWith the easy faith of her childhood.Her mother is almost forgotten,When a former nurse of Zunaga,Having served the time of her ransom,Has sought the Cacique for employment.She knows the whole piteous story,Of the maid and her heartless mother;Her soul is drawn back to the maiden,And she knows, with the whole of her nature,That this is her old master's daughter.And Malinche, across the threshold,Calls back all the thoughts of her childhood,And each feels the grasp of the other,And the past is all plain to Malinche.The noble Cacique of TabascoHeard all of the pitiful story,And swore, by the gods, to avenge her"Of her cruel and faithless mother,With her heart as hard as the itztli,The sanctified blade of the prophet."He would seek the king, Moctheuzoma,That ruled in the city of temples,Tenochtitlan, greatest of cities,And tell him the tale of Malinche,That all of her wrongs might be rightedAnd the maiden restored to her birthright.But, in the white heat of his anger,A stranger appears at the river—'Tis the pale-faced chief, and his army,With his soldiers clad like the fishes,With the shining scales for their frontlets,With their weapons charged with the lightning,Like the thunderbolts of great Thaloc,With their four-legged gods, like the bison,With the head of a man in the center,And the flaming nostril distended,Breathing fire, like the front of a dragon,When they shake the earth with their tramping.Surely these were the legates of heaven,Great Quetzalcoatl, surely fought with them.And in vain was the chieftain's endeavor,Tabasco soon fell to their prowess,And they must now purchaseappeasement.And the worthy Cacique of TabascoForgets all his pledges of ransom,And Malinche is one of the twenty,Of the maids that he gives to Cortez.As pure as the bright water lilyThat shines from the rim of Tezcuco;As bright as the rays of Tonatu',Rising out of the gulf of Mexitli;As chaste as the moon in its glances,At the mirroring face of Chalco;As fresh as the breezes that banquetThe morn in the isles of the spices—Even such was the Maid of Painnalla,The beautiful brown-eyed Malinche.Cortez has been seeking a sponsorTo ravel the intricate language,When he is informed of the maiden,And she is first brought to his presence.A favorite child of the household,She is robed in the neatest of vestures.The feather-cloth covers her shoulders,Her waist is enclosed with a girdleHolding skirt of the finest of cotton,Her feet on the daintiest sandals,Her face, veiled with gossamer pita,Lends the highest charm to her blushes.With Aguilar first she converses(He had lived some years with the natives,Borne ashore where his vessel had stranded).She had learned all the various shadings,The many and quaint dialections,Of the several Anahuac nations;And not long till the noble CastilianYields its palm to her ready conquest.The mighty commander, brave Cortez,With his piercing dark eyes, was her teacher;For love is the aptest of pupils,And the heart is your ready translator.The words of the Chief were no longerThe meaningless voice of the stranger,But the language of Spain and of heaven.Cortez, cast a thought to the island;To his early love, Catalina;To the prison of fierce Velasquez;His reluctant marriage in Cuba.Yet, how faithful had been the Dona!And never yet had been brokenHispledges of perfect devotion;But the morals of HispagniolaAre subject to easiest bending.The priest giving ready indulgenceTo sins that are nearest to nature,And Malinche, robbed of her birthrightAnd denied the boon of a mother,Had only her love to direct her,Which led her unerring to Cortez;He opened his arms to receive her,(She, the purest jewel of Aztlan)And, as moth falls into the torchlight,She fell to his brilliant alluring.If purest of wifely devotion,With its love that isallof woman,If the absence of wrong intentionIn the innocent glow of nature,Uninspired by the shadow of evil,Made her wife, she was wife of Cortez.Not a whisper of Catalina,His beautiful wife on the island,Had the chieftain given the maiden;And she felt as free as the waterOn the rugged brink of 'Morenci;As the bee to gather the honeyFrom the nectaries on the mountainsAnd the multiple bloom of the valleys.She thought there was naught to prevent herFrom her lavish of love on the Chieftain.O the faith that is always faultless,That ever grows up toward Heaven,(To the center of love returning)Whence it sprang as seed from the Godhead!How its track is hounded by evil!How its purity pants in the darkness!How it flutters into the pitfalls!And how its white wings are brokenAnd its plumage stained and bedraggled!But 'tis only the earth that despoils it,To teach it more earnest endeavor,To lift the wing higher in ether,And fix the eye firmer on Heaven.But alas! for bonnie Malinche;Her faith had no heavenly fragrance,Except in its helpless dependence.It knew not the way of the angels,But groped like the vine in the cavern,Always reaching out for the sunlight,Always tender and white of fiber.And the worthy father, Olmedo,Taught the maid the lore of the ages;Taught of life, and death, and the Savior,And the beautiful boon, resurrection,And the story of Magdalene,Of much loving, and much forgiving;Yet he whispered naught of the Chieftain,And the maiden lived on in blindness,Though "Credos" and "Ave Marias"Fell as pearls from the lips thus ladenWith the story of Jesu' and Mary.And as Christ touched the lips of childhoodAnd made them the text of his sermon,(The innocent sponsors of Heaven)Malinche, enrapt at the story,Shined out through her every action,Translating the life of the God-Son,To speak in behalf of her people.She plead for the chiefs of Tlascala—Las Casas had no abler allyWhen he struck the stone heart of Cortez—And the stonier heart of Castile,In his earnest prayer for the AztecsAnd the ill-starred King Moctheuzoma.Her blood gave its ardent petitionIn behalf of her race and her people,Her bronzed hand pressing the balanceOn the side of mercy and manhood.When the light first shines in the cavernDamp and dark with moldering ages,It gathers each gleam of the crystalsThat cycles have hoarded in brilliance;So the heart, groping back to the sunlight,Over graves of its superstitions,Throws its shoots through every creviceThat promises health to its fibers.Thus the virgin soul of Malinche(The image of God on its tablet)Made the glow of her first impressionsThe heart and the soul of the gospel.But how cunningly clasp the fettersThat fate has unconsciously molded;And yet, how they pinion our passportOn the trend of further indulgence—The conquest was hardly completed,And the maid in the fullest enjoymentOf the treasure she aided to purchaseWhen the island divulges its secret,And the wife of his early loving,And the wife of his after loathing,Appears at the door of the Chieftain.O Malinche! brown-eyed Malinche!The finger of fate is upon you;The wrongs of your conscienceless motherWere the scar and bane of yourchildhood.The years with their velveted footfallsHave forced them far back in the shadows,—But here comes a heart that is bleedingFor the touch of its earliest treasure.With an even right you have won it;Upon your warm bosom have worn it.But another, unknown, has possessed it,And puts forth her hand to recover.Will you strike at her just petition?Love is love; but hers is the older,And it has grown sharp with its longing;The hunger of years is upon it,And pleads all the patience of loving.They met, the brown maid of PainnallaAnd the pale, blushing rose of the island,—Malinche and sad Catalina.The Dona gave voice to her murmurIn words that were pungent and bitter,Reproaching the maid for the beautyThat had stolen the heart of her husband.But Malinche returned no reproachesWhen she heard the whole truth from the Dona;But her tears, as the dew of the morning,Which like diamonds filled her dark lashes,Smote the tender heart of the maiden:"O maiden, most hard and unconscious!"Cried Malinche, out of her sobbing,"Hear the bitter tale of my lifetime;And the Heavenly melting of pityWill fill all the place of your loathing."Then she told her the whole sad story—How her cruel mother betrayed her,How she fell a slave to the Chieftain,And was called upon to interpret."But the heart is easily broken,Fair maiden!" Malinche continued."And before I knew, I had fallen;And I hung on his matchless features,The wonderful glow of his prowess,And the liquid flow of his language,Till I could no longer resist him.I thought I was free to embrace him,And I gave my whole life to his keeping.How I thrilled to his first caressing,And panted to gather his kisses!How I hung on the lips of the morningThat shadowed his life with new danger!Could I die for the love I bore him,I would pity the weight of the casketThat gave such a featherlike measure;Could I stand in the breach of dangerTo shelter his form from the missile,I could mourn that the Father had givenBut only one heart for the arrow.I loved him! I loved him! I loved him!And this is my furtherest pleading."And long ere Malinche had finishedThe Dona had mingled her weeping,And each held the hand of the otherIn truce of their worthless repining;And Malinche, as Magdalene,Would have washed the feet of her Master,But the Dona rather preferred herAscompanionand friend in pastime;So they passed their time in the solaceOf a friendship closely cemented.But the beautiful flower of the islandFell a prey to the varying climateAnd the dormant love of the Chieftain.She pointed her white hands to heaven,And she gave back to Mary MotherHer tired soul as white as the snowdrift.The busy brown hands of MalincheHad never once tired of their officeIn smoothing her feverish pillows.Her fresh, perfect faith pointing upward,Helped to pinion the soul for its passage."Farewell to thee, fair Catalina!Though you tore my heart with your coming,You have torn it worse with your going.May the angels, shrouding your sorrow,Pour their multiple bliss in your welcome,And paradise pant with your beauty,And Heaven, as white as your goodness,Shine out through the doors for Malinche;For I envy your early passage,And would gladly have gone before you.I have found earth's love but a fetterTo cripple the wing of our exit."And after he humbled the Aztecs,The Chieftain soon turned to the southward,Still holding the hand of Malinche,As if the cold palm of the DonaHad never intruded its presence;His memory, cold as her pulses,Gave hardly a throb at departure,But Malinche wept o'er her ashes,And prayed that the blessing of HeavenMight comfort the soul of the Dona;Yet she held not her hand from the Chieftain,Though she chid with the love of the turtle;Yet her heart could not harrow its fallowThough a hundred-fold lay in the effort.The ill-fated Chief Guatamozin(Who succeeded the great Moctheuzoma,And so stubbornly fought for his people)Had fared the same fate of the Monarch,Except that he gazed on the ashes,And saw the cold ghost of his nationPass out through the gates of the sunset,And all just a little before him.He attended Cortez on his journey,With other great men of his people;Never man was more loyal to masterThan the throneless King to his Chieftain—To the cavalcade came a rumor,That the life of Cortez was endangeredBy a plot of the Aztec attendants(Cortez was the stoniest master,To the Knights as well as the natives,And no wonder his life should be threatened.The scar of a crime on our nature,With remembrance of wrong we inflicted,Puts a double watch on our victim;We are prone to measure in manner,Each soul in the pitiful bushelThat holds the shrunk grains ofourmanhood.)And Cortez turned his eyes for an answer,To the plot that was laid for his footsteps,On the staunch Aztec King, Guatamozin;He had fought a brave battle for Aztlan,And the Spaniards had felt his prowessIn the hardly wrenched sword of their triumph;But when the despair of his nationSettled down on his heart as a mountain,No treachery lingered to poisonThe flow of his deeply drawn sadness.Yet, the wrongs he had laid on the people,Stalked out as a ghost on the Chieftain.And the sad eyes of poor Guatamozin,Were his guilty conscience' accuser;And though not a stain was upon him,Yet the Chief was condemned by Cortez.Then Malinche's warm heart overflowing,When she saw how unjust was the sentence,Gave its plea with the beautiful pathosOf the life that is simple and loving.Though she was baptized as a Christian,And was charmed with the life of the God-Son,Yet the water the priest sprinkled on herPurged not from her veins the warm AztecWhich, charged with a just indignation,Poured out on her Chieftain its measure:"As a faithful God is my witness—Not a throb of my heart has wastedIts pulse on the suit of another,Since you glittered my life with its purchase,I have loved you too well for my worship,Which has hardly a God, but my Chieftain;But I plead for my country and people—You showed me a Christ that was loving,Whose life was a psalm of forgiveness,Who touched the hot lips of our angerWith the tender finger of patience.I was won by his great example,Itwarmedthe cold stone of the AztecWith theradiantbeams of the morning;It loosened the chains from the anklesThat were swift on errands of mercy;It tore off the scales from the eyelidsThat were blinded with superstition;Gave freedom to innocent victims,From the fearful death of the itztli;And winged back the soul to its manor,From the desert and dust of the ages."But where is the Christ you were pleading—The merciful God of your banner?The nails of the cross are your sword points,And his pleadings the parent of carnage.His merciful words are but margods,To hurl on your host to the slaughter.As I pleaded for MoctheuzomaThat you spare him the shame of his prison,So I plead for the brave Guatamozin,Though he fought so hard for the Aztecs,I would balance my life on his honor.The traitor is not of such metal,At your front—in your face—he may strike you;But he takes not the night for his helmlet,Nor is treachery ever his weapon.Then spare him, my noble Hernando!"But her prayers were in vain for the victim,The heart of Cortez was relentless;And another brave soul winged its passage,To try if the gates of the cityStill turn for the broken in spirit.In time they drew near to Painnalla,And the tale of her childhood confronts her,Though she hardly can call up one featureTo gaze on the face of another,And each say to each, "We are brothers";Yet the story has lived with her living,And been fanned by the fervor of gossip;And Malinche's warm heart has been shaken,O'er the bitterest brink of a trial.Her Chieftain, grown great with his conquest,Thrusts the knife of his pride to her heartstrings,In search of some noble alliance;And she must be weaned from his wooing.As onlyoneGod lighteth Heaven,She has held theoneplace in his household,Than which has the earth none more sacred.Yet the shade of the poor CatalinaHas shown her how weak is the Chieftain,And the bolt is thus broken in falling;Still her whole heart presses the balance,And a sacred thing was her loving,For love is the latch-key to Heaven.But she tries to force back her sorrowAt the sacred shrine of her birthplace;And the angels are gentle that hoverAt the rustic shade of the hearthstone.All the sorrow comes out of the shadow,All the bitterness bathes in the sunshine,The stubbornest pangs of resentmentAre cooled to the calm of forgiveness;And charity cradles the armorThat was harnessed in bristling anger.Her mother is summoned with othersAt the call of Cortez to assemble,And Malinche sees mother and brotherThrough the soul of an earnest hunger.She (young in all things but her sorrow,And with only her nature to prompt her)Beholds, with the heart of a daughter,The mother that cruelly spurned her,In the fading Spring of her lifetime.The mother, as ready respondingTo the tie that her crime would have broken,Sees her child, like the face of a spectre,Rising out of the grave to accuse her,And in terror would fly from her presence;But Malinche sprang forward to grasp her,And, forgetting all else but her mother,Poured out her full heart in caresses,Saying, "Surely, my mother, you knew notWhen you sold me away to the traders;Surely, not with your voice could you sanction,Your words would have frozen together,And not with your heart you consented.The blood would have whited to marble;Some artifice surely was practiced.My mother wasalwaysmy mother;And though you unwittingly sold me,Malinche is free to forgive you.Take back to your bosom your daughter,It is all for the best that we parted,For it gave me my sweet Mary MotherWith her child, the immaculate God-Son;And better a slave and a Christian,Than a priest in the pay of the temple.And, yet, how I longed for a mother,To show the clear trail for my footsteps,And to hold the white hand of my childhood!With no other mother but Mary(Sweet Mary, the soul of compassion),I have tried to grow up towards Heaven;But a mother on earth is the blessingThat can never be held by another.Our flesh will not float on the pinionsThat bear to Elysian our spirits;Our hearts are too warm for the angels,To hush with their transparent fingers;Our lips are too ready for kissesTo be cooled to the calm of devotion;Our hands are too warm inanother'sTo be folded in supplication;Too much of the earth is about usTo be lost in the halo of Heaven—So we need the cool heart of the motherThat has passed the hot chaos of passion,To temper the pulse that is wayward."Yet I cannot have wandered so greatly,When love was the only impulsion,Such a distance away from the MasterWhose name is the essence of loving;But he sees the bare heart in its throbbing,And the crystallized faith of my footstepsThat were only too quick in their choosing.Surely, Love, the benificent Master,Springing forth from the bosom of Mary,To smother the earth with caresses,Will drop a light hand on the shoulderThat shadows a heart that has wanderedBy only its warm overflowing."She loaded her mother with jewels,And left not the shadow of maliceTo stain the fair skirts of her mercy,But canceled her wrongs with caresses,And covered the past with forgiveness.Thus she bore the whole soul of the GospelTo the hungry hearts of her people;And the heart is not hard to the sermonThat carries a life for its backgroundAs perfectly pure as the precept.The heathen is waiting the harvest—Only hallowed hands for the sickle;When the life and the lip move togetherMillennium waits on the morning.The trial that sometimes had shadowedComes at last in its fullness upon her,And the pride of Cortez seeks anotherFor the place that is only Malinche's.And he offers to Don XamarilloThe tremulous hand of the maiden,As if it was his to bestow herAs a chattel—a token of friendship—On his friend and bosom companion.The anger of love was upon her,And all of her beauty shone brightest,As she flashed on her recreant loverThe flaming scourge of her protest:"I came as a slave to your camp-ground;You lifted me out of my bondage,For you knew I was free in my birthright.You wooed me, and won me as lover,And only as wife could have worn it;I have drawn on your love as a garment.You first sought me out as a sponsor,But the language of Spain is a magnetThat drew me all out of MalincheAnd made me a part of her Chieftain;And now you would sunder the tendrilsAnd force back the vine from the branchesWhere they learn't all of life in reclining,And never can unlearn the lesson."O, Hernando, you know not Malinche!If you think she can cherish anotherIn the heart she too willingly gave you;Were you priest of the Aztec temple,And should raise in your hand the itztli,To open the breast of your victim;My heart would leap out at your calling,E're the word of your summons was spoken.Ask me to anticipate Heaven,And my life would be swift in its forfeit.But to learn the love of another,And to wean me from your caresses,Is beyond the wisdom of granting.The logic of love hath a limit,Only God can re-tension our heart-strings."Oh, Hernando! my prince and my primate,My husband on earth and in Heaven!Let me cling to your feet as a hand-maid,And wash with my tears, as anotherDid moisten the feet of our Savior,But drive me not hence from your presence.I can never love Xamarillo—He can fetter the hand of Malinche,But her heart will go over the oceanAnd will smite at your breast when you profferYour hand to some delicate Dona."Not alone is the voice of my pleading,But an angel in Heavenconfrontsyou;The white wings of sweet Catalina,Shall flutter the breath of your wooing:You sent her too early to HeavenTo quiet the shade of her anguish.Two wives—one on earth, one in Heaven—Throw theirloveandyourpride in the balance;And another whose innocent glancesShould burn all the dross from your nature,Your child is a witness against you;God has sent him a pledge of my wifehood,To nail the black lie of denying."Though no priest gave the mystical signet,Surely God heard the vows that were spokenWhen our hearts took their place at the wedding;And who shall say nay to a union,When Love gives our souls to each other?God is Love, and no higher can speak it.O, Hernando! be father and husband,Be angel and saint to Malinche!She kneels, as she would at God's altar,To plead for the heart you have broken.O, turn from your pride, and but touch it,And it will bloom over with blessing,And will hallow the hand that shall heal it!"All in vain did she plead with the Chieftain;His pride was the bane of his footsteps.The angel of Love would have held him,But the blood of old Spain was too purple,And smothered her tender endeavor.The grip of his purpose still held him,And Malinche, now passive with anguish,Was given to Don XamarilloWith all the sanction of marriage.He was kind, indulgent and loving,And she was made wealthy by CortezGiving back the estate of her motherAnd much of the wealth of the province,As if he would purchase appeasement.The Chieftain made lavish atonement,As far as the world could atone her;But her heart was impossible healing.Though her charities gave her some solace,And she strove with the earnest of pathosTo lose in the anguish of othersThe shadow of self and of sorrow,Yet she wended her way, broken-hearted;And, as if like the spirit of Aztlan,With the mark of perpetual sadness,With the head bending over and brooding—As groping her way to the sunset,Peering out for the light that was passingFor ever and aye with the shadows—She fell asleep with her people,And an angel was born in Heaven.And a guardian angel descended,And gathered thy ashes, dead Aztlan!And spread her white wings o'er the casket,To wait for the sound of the trumpetThat called thee to life and to freedom.It rode on the wing of the North Wind,And shook the whole earth when it sounded.And no plainer hozanna gave echo,Than arose from thy halls, Montezuma,When the shade of Malinche gave battle,And the armies of Spain were dismembered,As Mexitli arose from her ashes,And a star was replanted in Heaven!And now, in the dusk of the evening,When lovers await at the casement,The tokened response of their ladies,When Chapultepec garlands her tabletsWith the beautiful plumage of springtime,And a thousand sprays of the sunlightGive her walls all the charm of enchantment,Malinche is seen through the shadows,The unsummoned guest at each wedding;The unspoken tryst of all lovers;Wherever two hands are united,The hand of a third presses o'er them.The troth of two hearts is cementedBy the one that was cruelly broken.No symbol of faith can be stronger,Than "The love that is true as Malinche's."And she watches the fate of the nationWith the jealous eye of a mother,—A mother, whose voice more than othersTaughttheir lips the first lisp of the Gospel,And tendered their steps toward Heaven.A saint, at whose shrine they all gatherWhen the shadow of war hovers o'er them,And the eagle swoops down from the mountainTo cover the snake with his talons.And they pledge anew to the bannerThat arose again with the nation,When the three hundred years of their bondageForged their broken links into missilesTo drive Spain into the ocean.Thus she holds the warm palm of her peopleWith a memory stronger than shadow,—She lives; and the Spirit of Aztlan,"The beautiful sphinx of the ages,"With its foot at the threshold of empire,And its hand on the pulse of the sunrise,And its crown of all possible setting,Has no brighter gem than Malinche.