The Fifteenth of September

After that gloomy page Upon which history traced the details Of that horrible day ; When sad Mexitli saw Its streets sown with corpses ; After that page of mourning For Cuahiitemoc, written before the conflict, When it felt the uselessness of its desire ; After that page, glory, Blotting our skies in its fame, Did not reappear in our heaven. The holy, the beloved Mother of those who fell, victors In their own fall, Was found among them, trembling and wounded By the greatest sorrow of sorrows. On her pale visage still sparkled A tear of her deepest grief ; At her side arose, Near a laurel, a broken macana ; * And deserted and alone she was, The last patriot already being vanquished. When they saw her sightless and staring eyes The Spaniards believed her dead, And between the unsteady flames of the Fire they threw her into the grave with her sons. One hundred years passed by, and three hundred, And the most sorrowful accents Of her faint and mournful lamentation Reached not a single ear, Until one night a man who was on guard, Dreaming of, I know not what, great and august, Like the same faith which inspired him, Heard an immense cry which spoke From the soul of the righteous : “It is I,” it repeated, “A descendant of those who, in the struggle, Sealed their defeat with their death ; It is I, the Complaint to whom no one listens, And the tears which no one heeds. My faith has told me that thy strength is mighty, That thy courage is great, and I come to see thee ; That in the eternal and trying patience With which for centuries unceasingly I battle, I know that thou wilt give me what I find not :— My mother who is here because I feel her presence.” Thus spoke the voice, and at the holy rejoicing Which the old man felt in its omnipotence, He said : “If the Indian weeps for his mother I will find a mother for that son ;” And he found that mother in his conscience. It was at this hour, and on a day Like this, on which we praise his memory. When the old man spoke, And since that moment, my fatherland, Thou knowest well that the star of thy glory, Fastened on the book of thy history, Has not yet set in thy heavens. At this hour it was when the stone Rolled into pieces which sealed that tomb Where thou, like Christ, wast dead, Only upon the third day to arise. At that hour it was when the door Of thy home opened, and that saw thee in its bosom, With a supreme dread in its joy Lest thy apparition was not real. And since that moment, and since that hour, Tranquil and without fears in thy heart, Thy dream is sheltered under a roof Where naught but pleasure weeps. No more thy sons will sigh, As formerly, at the remembrance of thy absence ; Nor are there chains to wound them now. On their fertile fields there flows no more The blood of slaughter and strife ; And from peace, among gentle joys, Under a shadowless and cloudless sky, The flowers will not be ashamed to bloom Nor the birds ashamed to sing. Thou art great, and upon thy path A future of glory opens before thee With the sweet promise of history That thy sun will never set. Tread that path, and follow With the experience of thy lesson of the past ; Work and struggle until the task is finished Which thou hast commenced on thy return to ex For yet in thy prisons something remains, [istence, Something which flight cannot recover, And something of Spain in thy conscience. I come to tell thee that it is necessary To kill that remembrance of the kings Which, concealed behind the confessional, Seeks to give thee other laws than thy laws ; That God exists not there where thy sons Disown thy love and thine affections ; That it is not he who pardons at the scaffold ; That it is not he of the altar and of the prayers ; That God is He who dwells in thy cabins ; That God is He who dwells in thy workshops, And who rises, present and incarnate, There, where without hatred of duties, [bread. At the end of the day’s work, man enjoys his honest I come to tell thee that it is not necessary That he who kills by the sword should die thereby ; That it is not with bloodshed that this age wants The populace to learn thy lessons ; That this age desires that in place of temples Thou shalt give it schools and precepts, [tion. That thou shalt give it a roof and under it instruc- Thus it is that on thy brow Thou wilt be able at last to place the crown Which the future has destined for thee. He who knows thy heart, who divines In thee the holy mother of progress, And who to-day, before the remembrance of that In which one of her kisses was the aurora [hour Which sprang from the night through the darkness, Whilst the people weep in rapture, Comes to caress thee with another kiss. 1873. * A wooden weapon in use among the ancient Indians of Mexico and Peru, generally edged with sharp flint.