Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/78

 There many corpses, rotting in the wind,

Poked up stiff limbs, but in the leprous rags

No jewel caught the sun, no tawny chain

Gleamed, as the prying halberds raked them o'er.

Pillage that ran red-handed through the streets

Came railing home at evening empty-palmed;

And they, on that sad night a twelvemonth gone,

Who, ounce by ounce, dear as their own life's blood

Retreating, cast the cumbrous load away:

They, when brown foemen lopped the bridges down,

Who tipped thonged chests into the stream below

And over wealth that might have ransomed kings

Passed on to safety;—cheated, guerdonless—

Found (through their fingers the bright booty slipped)

A city naked, of that golden dream

Shorn in one moment like a sunset sky.

Deep in a chamber that no cheerful ray

Purged of damp air, where in unbroken night

Black scorpions nested in the sooty beams,

Helpless and manacled they led him down—

Cuauhtemotzin—and other lords beside—

All chieftains of the people, heroes all—

And stripped their feathered robes and bound them there

On short stone settles sloping to the head,

But where the feet projected, underneath

Heaped the red coals. Their swarthy fronts illumed,

The bearded Spaniards, helmed and haubergeoned, 28