Nor yield our hands the bloody sacrifice;
But life and joy the Power delights to give
And bids his children but rejoice and live.
Thou seest through heaven the day-dispensing Sun
In living radiance wheel his golden throne,
O’er earth’s gay surface send his genial beams,
Force from yon cliffs of ice the vernal streams;
While fruits and flowers adorn the cultured field,
And seas and lakes their copious treasures yield:
He reigns our only god. In him we trace
The friend, the father of our happy race.
Late the lone tribes, on those unlabor’d shores,
Ran wild and served imaginary powers;
Till he in pity taught their feuds to cease,
Devised their laws and fashion’d all for peace.
My sacred parents first the reign began,
Sent from his courts to guide the paths of man,
To plant his fruits, to manifest his sway
And give their blessings where he gives the day.
The sachem proud replied: Thy garb and face
Proclaim thy lineage of superior race;
And our progenitors, no less than thine,
Sprang from a god and own a birth divine.
From that sky-scorching mount, on floods of flame,
In elder times my great forefathers came;
There dwells the sire and from his dark abode
Oft claims as now the tribute of a god.
This victim due when willing mortals pay,
His terrors lessen and his fires decay;
While purer sleet regales the mountain air,
And our glad hosts are fired for fiercer war.
Yet know, dread chief, the pious youth rejoin’d,
Some one prime Power produced all humankind:
Some sire supreme, whose ever-ruling soul
Creates, preserves and regulates the whole.
That sire supreme must roll his radiant eye
Round the wide earth and through the boundless sky;
That all their habitants, their gods and men,
May rise unveil’d beneath his careful ken.
Could thy dark fiend, that hides his blind abode
And cauldrons in his cave that fiery flood,
Yield the rich fruits that distant nations find,
Or praise or punish or behold mankind?
But when my god, resurging from the night,
Shall gild his chambers with the morning light,
By mystic rites he’ll vindicate his throne
And own thy servant for his duteous son.
Meantime, the chief replied, thy cares releast,
Rest here the night and share our scanty feast;
Which, driven in hasty rout, our train supplied,
When trembling earth foretold the boiling tide.
They fared, they rested; till with lucid horn
All-cheering Phosphor led the lively morn;
The prince arose, an altar rear’d in haste,
And watcht the splendors of the reddening east.
As o’er the mountain flamed the sun’s broad eye,
He call’d the host, his holy rites to try;
Then took the loaves of maize, the bounties brake,
Gave to the chief and bade them all partake;
The hallow’d relics on the pile he placed,
With tufts of flowers the simple offering graced,
Held to the sun the image from his breast,
Whose glowing concave25 all the god exprest;
O’er the dried leaves the rays concentred fly,
And thus his voice ascends the listening sky:
O thou, whose splendors kindle heaven with fire,
Great soul of nature, man’s immortal sire,
If e’er my father found thy sovereign grace,
Or thy blest will ordain’d the Incan race,
Give these lorn tribes to learn thy awful name,
Receive this offering and the pile inflame;
So shall thy laws o’er wider bounds be known
And earth’s whole race be happy as thy own.
Thus pray’d the prince; the focal flames aspire,
The mute beholders tremble and retire,
Gaze on the miracle, full credence own
And vow obedience to the sacred Sun.
The legates now their further course descried,
A young cazique attending as a guide,
O’er craggy cliffs pursued their eastern way,
Trod loftier champaigns, meeting high the day,
Saw timorous tribes in these sublime abodes
Adore the blasts and turn the storms to gods;
While every cloud that thunders through the skies
Claims from their hands a human sacrifice.
Awhile the youth, their better faith to gain,
Strives with his usual art, but strives in vain;
In vain he pleads the mildness of the sun;
A gale refutes him ere his speech be done;
Continual tempests from their orient blow
And load the mountains with eternal snow.
The sun’s own beam, the timid clans declare,
Drives all their evils on the tortured air;
He draws the vapors up their eastern sky,
That sail and centre round his dazzling eye;
Leads the loud storms along his midday course
And bids the Andes meet their sweeping force,
Builds their bleak summits with an icy throne,
To shine through heaven, a semblance of his own;
Hence the sharp sleet, these lifted lawns that wait,
And all the scourges that attend their state.
Two toilsome days the virtuous Inca strove
To social life their savage minds to move;
When the third morning glow’d serenely bright,
He led their elders to an eastern height;
The world unlimited beneath them lay
And not a cloud obscured the rising day.
Vast Amazonia, starr’d with twinkling streams,
In azure drest, a heaven inverted seems;
Dim Paraguay extends the aching sight,
Xaraya glimmers26 like the moon of night,
Land, water, sky in blending borders play
And smile and brighten to the lamp of day.
When thus the prince: What majesty divine!
What robes of gold! what flames about him shine!
There walks the god; his starry sons on high
Draw their dim veil and shrink behind the sky;
Earth with surrounding nature’s born anew,
And men by millions greet the glorious view.
Who can behold his all delighting soul
Give life and joy, and heaven and earth control,
Bid death and darkness from his presence move,
Who can behold and not adore and love?
Those plains, immensely circling, feel his beams,
He greens the groves, he silvers gay the streams,
Swells the wild fruitage, gives the beast his food,
And mute creation hails the genial god.
But richer boons his righteous laws impart,
To aid the life and mould the social heart,
His arts of peace through happy realms to spread,
And altars grace with sacrificial bread;
Such our distinguisht lot, who own his sway,
Mild as his morning stars and liberal as the day.
His unknown laws, the mountain chief replied,
May serve perchance your boasted race to guide;
And yon low plains, that drink his partial ray,
At his glad shrine their just devotions pay.
But we nor fear his frown nor trust his smile;
Vain as our prayers is every anxious toil;
Our beasts are buried in his whirls of snow,
Our cabins drifted to his slaves below.
Even now his placid looks thy hopes beguile,
He lures thy raptures with a morning smile;
But soon (for so those saffron robes proclaim)
His own black tempest
