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(Excerpt)
PALE peak, afar | |
| Gilds thy white pinnacle a single star, | |
| While sharply on the deep blue sky thy snows | |
| In deathlike calm repose. | |
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| The nightingale | 5 |
| Through Mira Flores bowers repeats her tale, | |
| And every rose its perfumed censer swings | |
| With vesper offerings. | |
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| But not for thee, | |
| Diademed king, this love-born minstrelsy, | 10 |
| Nor yet the tropic gales that gently blow | |
| Through these blessed vales below. * * * * * | |
| Deep in thy heart | |
| Burn on vast fires, struggling to rend apart | |
| Their prison walls, and then in wrath be hurled | 15 |
| Blazing upon the world. | |
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| In vain conspire | |
| Against thy majesty tempests and fire; | |
| The elemental wars of madness born, | |
| Serene, thou laugh’st to scorn. | 20 |
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| Calm art thou now | |
| As when the Aztec, on thine awful brow, | |
| Gazed on some eve like this from Chalco’s shore, | |
| Where lives his name no more. | |
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| And thou hast seen | 25 |
| Glitter in dark defiles the ominous sheen | |
| Of lances, and hast heard the battle-cry | |
| Of Castile’s chivalry. | |
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| And yet again | |
| Hast seen strange banners steering o’er the main, | 30 |
| When from his eyrie soared to conquest forth | |
| The eagle of the North. | |
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| Yet at thy feet, | |
| While rolling on, the tides of empire beat, | |
| Thou art, O mountain, on thy world-piled throne, | 35 |
| Of all, unchanged alone. | |
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| Type of a power | |
| Supreme, thy solemn silence at this hour | |
| Speaks to the nations of the Almighty Word | |
| Which at thy birth was stirred. | 40 |
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| Prophet sublime! | |
| Wide on the morning’s wings will float the chime | |
| Of martial horns; yet mid the din thy spell | |
| Shall sway me still,—farewell. | |
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