O sorcerer Time, turn backward to the shore
Where it is always morning, and the birds
Are troubadours of all the hidden lore
Deeper than any words!
There lived a maiden once,--O long ago,
Ere men were grown too wise to understand
The ancient language that they used to know
In Quezalcoatl's land.
Though her own mother sold her for a slave,
Her own bright beauty as her only dower,
Into her slender hands the conqueror gave
A more than queenly power.
Between her people and the enemy--
The fierce proud Spaniard on his conquest bent--
Interpreter and interceder, she
In safety came and went.
And still among the wild shy forest folk
The birds are singing of her, and her name
Lives in that language that her people spoke
Before the Spaniard came.
She is not dead, the daughter of the Sun,--
By love and loyalty divinely stirred,
She lives forever--so the legends run,--
Returning as a bird.
Who but a white bird in her seaward flight
Saw, borne upon the shoulders of the sea,
Three tiny caravels--how small and light
To hold a world in fee!
Who but the quezal, when the Spaniards came
And plundered all the white imperial town,
Saw in a storm of red rapacious flame
The Aztec throne go down!
And when the very rivers talked of gold,
The humming-bird upon her lichened nest
Strange tales of wild adventure never told
Hid in her tiny breast.
The mountain eagle, circling with the stars,
Watched the great Admiral swiftly come and go
In his light ship that set at naught the bars
Wrought by a giant foe.
Dull are our years and hard to understand,
We dream no more of mighty days to be,
And we have lost through delving in the land
The wisdom of the sea.
Yet where beyond the sea the sunset burns,
And the trees talk of kings dead long ago,
Malinche sings among the giant ferns--
Ask of the birds--they know!