n love, the race;
And leads, with greater tenderness, the blind,
That they more closely feel His clasp, who cannot see His
face.

The arts of husbandry were well advanced:
They sowed and reaped unstinted from the soil;
The sun, with ripening fervor, on them glanced,
And gave them back, a hundred fold, their toil.
They had not lost their ancient faith in him,
Though other gods their scattered homage claim
His breast was their Elysian; never dim
The ancient hope that hung upon his name.
Their maize and maguey shone upon the plain,
Their chocolate gave nourishment and zest,
The corn gave recompense for sugar-cane,
Their banquets were provided with the best;
Fish from the ocean, fruits from every clime,
So diverse, yet within such easy reach;
The tropics and the temperates enchime
With all their plumaged babblings of speech;
And they interpreted the varied whims
That Nature holds embryoed in her breast.
They climbed the boughs and shook her heaviest limbs,
Too burdened for the garner to be missed.
This ancient mother never yet has failed
Her children in their earnest search for food;
She may be panoplied and heavy mailed,
Yet does her larder furnish all when fully understood.

Take all in all, and measure by the test--
The stern, hard test of history--and we find
That Aztlan, very far from being best,
Still was a prodigy. That she was blind
In her religious ethics, none deny;
That she had faults, no champion gainsays;
She lifted bloody hands against the sky;
She filled the avenging measure of her days.
But God is God, and man is always man;
And earthly judgment is at best a snare.
And never, since the human race began,
Has turned to Heaven more piteous despair
Than her sad eyes, burnt out with agony;
Moaning above her nation, and her name,
The bitter monody of "Not to be,"
The deep humiliation, and the shame
That sent her crouching at the foot of Spain;
(The fairest daughter of the wilderness)
Without a hand to s