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 words of admonishment all are said,
And the buoyant crowd to their homes return.
"The King is dead!" "Long live the King!"
"Hail!" and "farewell!" how closely tread
The steps of the living upon the dead!
How are both touched with a single spring!
Nezahualpilli soon passes away,
And the rival King, he so lately crowned,
Divides his Kingdom, and makes a prey,
A figment, with empire's empty sound.
And Montezuma outleaps the King;
But is lord of an empire reaching the sea;
And many nations their tribute bring,
And some of the weak to the southward flee,
To pass the reach of his powerful arm,
And lift new prodigies to the sky,
To meet Earth's sunshine, shadow, and storm,
To finish the race, to falter and die.

He gathers his treasures from myriad mines.
The cotton and aloe are wove into cloth.
The banana and maize and wild forest vines,
While they load to repletion, are proof against sloth.
His palace is burnished with every hue
Of the rainbow tints of his fabulous land,
Where Nature entravails on every hand
To bring new beauties of life to view.
There are drapes of feather-cloth deftly made,
There were plumes and plushes of richest craft,
There were broidered robes where the colors played,
Like the hands that made them, dainty and daft.
His harem equaled his Ottoman peer,
There was beauty of every hue and mold--
The shy and the gay, the demure and bold--
That his provinces f