Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Americas: Vol. XXX. 1876–79.
Popocatepetl
By William Haines Lytle (1826–1863)P
Gilds thy white pinnacle a single star,
While sharply on the deep blue sky thy snows
In deathlike calm repose.
Through Mira Flores bowers repeats her tale,
And every rose its perfumed censer swings
With vesper offerings.
Diademed king, this love-born minstrelsy,
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
Blazing upon the world.
Against thy majesty tempests and fire;
The elemental wars of madness born,
Serene, thou laugh’st to scorn.
As when the Aztec, on thine awful brow,
Gazed on some eve like this from Chalco’s shore,
Where lives his name no more.
Glitter in dark defiles the ominous sheen
Of lances, and hast heard the battle-cry
Of Castile’s chivalry.
Hast seen strange banners steering o’er the main,
When from his eyrie soared to conquest forth
The eagle of the North.
While rolling on, the tides of empire beat,
Thou art, O mountain, on thy world-piled throne,
Of all, unchanged alone.
Supreme, thy solemn silence at this hour
Speaks to the nations of the Almighty Word
Which at thy birth was stirred.
Wide on the morning’s wings will float the chime
Of martial horns; yet mid the din thy spell
Shall sway me still,—farewell.