Hiram Hoyt Richmond

“ O God of gods! be with us when we pray,
And give us rest;
List our entreaty, be not far away,
Be near each breast.
The gods of Mizraim, we have sought in vain,—
They answer not;
Our prayers are but an empty, aching pain,—
We are forgot.
Though Isis bless our fields and flocks with growth,
And Thoth be heard;
Upon the tongues of wisemen, yet, is wroth
Some mighty lord.
Some hidden power without us; in the dark
We grope our way;
From thine own glory, lend to us a spark,
[20] Be thou our day.
O, make thee to be known,
From thy unchanging throne,
God of the trusting heart ”

“ 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 spoken
When 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. ”

“ 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 God 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. ”

“ The Son of God become the Son of Man;
And ye may see, by faith, if ye implant
The tree of your redemption, so its leaves
May cover Egypt and the rest of earth.
"'The pestilence that darkens at your door
[16] Came as a cry, from Mizraim in bonds;
"'Strike off his chains! and I will lift you up.
Love ye your neighbor, as ye love yourselves;
His bruises and your pestilence shall pass
Together from the land. Live ye pure lives,
And all your blackness shall become as snow.
Make room for me among you; in the morn
Let rise your incense to the throne of grace;
Bring me your noon oblation ”

“ The pale-faced prophet Quetzalcoatl [G]
Had gone to the rising sun;
In his wizard boat he was seen to float,
To where the day was begun,
Without a sail on the wings of the gale,
For the land of Tlappalan [H]
He waved back his followers from the sea,
Saying he would certainly come again,
In the golden future, yet to be,
And the gods should dwell on the earth as men.
They had made him a god, because he was good—
Not always the case in the mystic love—
They had carved his image in stone and wood,
And his shrines were built on the pyramid's floor. ”

“ 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 shine;
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 god doth begin,
And the praise of the day-king embalms every breath ”

“ The birds and flocks for us to gather flesh,
The forests and the prairies for our use,
The mines for metal, and the streams for fish—
All, all, pay tribute to our wasting hands.
Yet we are not a law unto ourselves:
Though masters, yet not gods, for we all die
And fall back into dust; yet are we great,
And greatest of earth's creatures; but for death,
We might claim highest unction; but our power
Is limited; wherefore, if we are highest type
Of creature earth, then must it surely be
That God is man, but of a higher mold ”

“ Great Montezuma! king, of earthly kings!
The heart of Tlalocan is bruised and broke
To hear the words his monarch has vouchsafed
Such sacrilege belongeth not to kings;
Great Huitzilopotchli must, indeed, be strayed,
Or, he will shake his thunders on the earth,
And, strike the Aztecs from the face of him.
War is the wastage of all human flesh,
And whether man be stricken on the field,
Or, with the sacred itztli, offered up,
The measure must be met with human blood. ”

“ Though the brow of Olympus be crowded with thrones,
And the cliffs of Parnassus resound with the tones
Of the Muses that sang at the foot of their god,
Not Apollo's great steeds, nor the flame of his car,
Nor Mars, with the terrible glitter of war,
[182] Can dazzle the face of thy sun and thy sod,
Bright Star of the West! Thou art Empire's own idol,
The steed of the lightning, untamed to the bridle!
What is History's wreath but a record of death!
Time breathes on the tablet, it fades with his breath ”

“ 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 cemented
By the one that was cruelly broken.
No symbol of faith can be stronger,
[179] Than "The love that is true as Malinche's."
And she watches the fate of the nation
With the jealous eye of a mother,—
A mother, whose voice more than others
Taught their lips the first lisp of the Gospel,
And tendered their steps toward Heaven. ”

“ The verdant monarchs beckon us to God;
Their benison with life alone departs;
They testify of Eden from the sod.
O man! that thy perfection should be lost,
When so much perfectness is left on earth!
How much of bitterness! With what a cost
Didst thou forget the sacred touch that hallowed thee at birth!
The worship of Hurakin, "Heart of Heaven,"
Spoke of a healthier, higher growth of soul,
The consciousness of sins to be forgiven;
A god, whom weakness could at once control;
A prophecy, of Fatherhood to come;
A ray that pencils from the "great white throne;" ”

“ MONTEZUMA. PART FIRST. EGYPT.
THE DISPERSAL AT SHINAR.
As mariner upon the rocky sea,
Without a compass, helm, or heavenly hope,
A part of Earth's great ancestry to be
Upon the plains of Shinar; 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 ”

“ Within 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 oft
To still the fevered brain and make us free—
It is a gentle hand, and moves so soft
That it compensates all our misery
By chaining all the lions of our life
And placing durance on the throbbing drum
That marshals us to earth's unpitying strife.
How should we reverence the hand that strikes our passions dumb!
Cortez and Montezuma ”

“ In shapely mounds, thy sculpturehood, and caught
From flying Time, the lustre 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.
Thy unknown crucial test, has passed the fire
Of many fading centuries; let none inquire
The secrets of thy conquest: be thou shut up with God,
The master molding of his hand—the jewel of his rod! ”

“ Oh King, and sons of Lud! No pardon asks
Old Kohen for the words that leap his lips;
No earthly throne gives warrant to my voice;
But he, the God, of whom our fathers told,
The God of Noah; he, at whose command
The patriarch bent to labor; and till twice
A hundred harvest moons had waned, wrought on
The ark, and saved the seed of man to earth,
He, he, has spoken! ”

“ Are gold-dust, from the placers of our homes—
The surface croppings from a nation's prime,
The mellow acre of the richest loams.
They overgrow the boundaries of life,
And push the horizon far out in space.
With lethargy they wage a ceaseless strife,
And with the whirling earth, they keep their pace.
All honor to the soul who sets his stake
Where human kind have never trenched before;
Where only God his thunders o'er it shake,
And solitude shall murmur, "nevermore." ”

“ That we may see him as he is; we came
To choose a god, whom we, indeed, can see;
Or, if his face be burnished with a flame
Too great for our uncovered eyes, then we
Are satisfied to close them in the smile
[18] Of one so radiant; so we feel him near,
"But we must know his presence for the while;
Speak Kohen! why can ye not bring him here?"
Then answered Kohen: "Urge me not, O King!
Ye know not what ye ask, if ye do seek
To see him as he is. A nameless thing,
A brow-bedabbled man, upon whose cheek,
Sheds everyday God's sunshine ”

“ They must divide with Egypt; but go out
Well laden for the journey; should they dare
[40] To turn, the heavy hand of Mizraim would not spare.
Ægyptus! thou above thy gates hath writ
So many times the monosylbic "when."
We, weary of conjecture; round us flit
The phantoms of the past; and we again
Pass in review thy pages, black with mold;
Intemporate within a crumbling earth,
Against the char of empires thou dost hold
The charms that emulate immortal birth.
We write mutation on the brow of Time;
Thou art the changeless one of all the world—
Thou hast no brotherhood in any clime ”

“ Build up your altars, offer from your best;
Am I not better than the best you have?
When ye have builded, pray; pour out your hearts
As ye pour out the blood; prayer is the key
To my most inner soul; the voice of love
Is prayer. It is the angel's wing that fell
Never yet short of Paradise. The voice
That trembles on the lips of infancy,
When reaching out to reason, and the last
That passes with the shadow of the sun
When life's last slope is reached, and never yet
Has the repentant spirit left unalmsed. ”

“ And the war-god was glutted with victims and gold.
A pledge of his prowess: a promise to fate,
That the nation would prosper, the King prove great.
Some men are great in sorrow—there be tears
That crystalize to diamonds at the last.
They need the weight of carbonizing years;
Yet, how they glitter after these have past!
Life needs the tempering at such a forge,
Or it would brittle at the lightest touch;
But when the burden is but one vast gorge,
The weary soul must cry, "It is too much."
Nezahualpilli [K] places the crown on his head,
And the victims bleed, and the altars burn ”

“ The gods of Egypt, all are impotent,
The people beat the empty air in vain;
No orgie gains the purchase of content,
Their altars only mock the nation's pain.
The King has called a council to discuss
The best-laid methods of religious thought.
[8] Of counselors, there is an overplus,
And many are the schemes that they have brought,
All conjured since they lost their way. The years
Had slowly passed, since God himself had spoke,
And hearts are human things, and their hot tears,
Melting their souls to harmony, in echoing murmur broke:
O Soul! ”

“ The sacred fane of childhood, when first reared,
How like a prophecy it should be read—
A thing to be adored, and sometimes feared!
So many unseen hands, smooth down the bed
Of infancy; we can but jostle with our utmost care
Against angelic presences that bend
And print their unseen kisses on the brow,
And with the infant earth, the Heavenly essence blend.
The wheel that never tires, and ever turns,
Crushing the neck of nations in its round,
Before whose tread, the star of empire burns,
Behind whose trend, the ridged and furrowed ground
Gives mute quiescence, to the Master hand ”

“ And set thy lips, forevermore unbribed,
Can break the seal of silence; we look out,
And over both eternities, and waste
Our energies, to find some well-tried route
Out of life's labyrinth, where we may taste
The true nepenthe that disarms all doubt.
Beyond all human ken the key is kept;
Our prison is too strong, and will not break,
Our Keeper's eyes are those that never slept,
Yet never slept for love and our dear sake;
Touched by God's hand, the bolts will always yield ”

“ Let him lift up his altars to the sun,
And I will call upon the Uncreate,
The hand, that shaped it from chaotic void,
The face, whose look first taught it how to smile.
He may call first, that it may vantage him;
But other than the earth can no man bring,
Fire from the distant realms, except it be
From God, Creator of the sun, the moon and stars. ”

“ If knowledge in the first, brought sorrowhood to earth,
The power to laugh and cry, were purchased at one birth.
They stand upon thy borders: Mighty Stream!
We will not pry thy silent lips apart,
To ask thee when, and how, the Prophet's dream
Reached its fulfillment; treasured in thy heart,
Let it remain as many other things
Are left; our language lessens their effect,
And makes them small in words,—the very springs
Of our existence, are not shown correct,
When crowded into verbage,—so we lay
Our beys upon thee, and we feel 'tis thine ”

“ And the Nilus pours over its green level banks, its annual freightage of spoil;
Where the date ripens dark to the child of the sun, and the pomegranate colors for fruit;
The ibis is sounding the damps of the land, and earth in its plethory mute.
The fat of the fields husks the voice of the morn, while Demeter is weighing her sheaves;
The lotus has honied its lips for the kiss, "and the turtle in mockery grieves."
[38] What is that, where the Orient gathers her gold, and the eye wanders back to the sea?
What cloud on the horizon's breach can be seen? What wakens the vulture's rude glee? ”

“ Pour out the lesson their dumb lips would teach,
Carthage, Phœnicia, Parthia and Rome
Clothe death with all the eloquence of speech;
And each form linklets of an unbroke chain.
But they are youthful; in perspective dim
As if unmoved with either joy or pain.
With arms enfolded, and with eye all fixed,
A silent portal in the track of time.
In the rough surge of nations still unmixed,
Where the great fathers left thee in the Sphinx,
And heaped the sands upon thy broken links,
Thou dost look down the ages to defy
Tradition, inspiration, and all future progeny. ”

“ Prone to the earth in trance, I had no thought,
Of what would come of it; you have it all.
I have the stone, and we will test its power.
If yonder priest, with his enshrouded myth,
Desires to measure lances with the sun,
Then we will each build altars to our gods,
And he that first draws fire from any source,
Not of the earth, shall claim the forfeiture
[28] Of all the other's tenantry to teach. ”

“ The deep-burned liturgy of hardened strife,
And through the furnace of their pungent grief,
They learn to plant the rootlets of their life.
One thing is never lacking, at the time,
When in their nascent passions, nations rise:
The craft of Priests, in every age and clime,
To "point a moral," or portend the skies.
And so, from cast-off altars to the sun,
New pleadings to new conjured gods arose;
The selfish passions since the world begun,
All seek supernal outlet on their foes. ”