Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/584

 568 WILLIAM H. LYTLE. [1850-60. Blent with the roar of guns and bombs, Nor yet the tropic gales that gently blow How grandly from the dim past comes Through these blessed vales below. The roll of their victorious drums, Their bugles' joyous notes. Around thy form When over Mexico's proud towers, Hover the mid-air fiends, the lightning And the fair valley's storied bowers, warm, Fit recompense of toil and scars. Thunder, and by the driving hurricane In triumph waved their flag of stars. In wrecks thy pines are lain. Ah, comrades, of your own tried troop. Deep in thy heart Whose honor ne'er to shame might stoop, Burn on vast fires, struggling to rend apart Of lion heart, and eagle swoop. Their prison walls, and then in wrath be But you alone remain ; hurled On all the rest has fallen the hush Blazing upon the world. Of death ; the men whose battle rush Was wild as sun-loosed torrents' flow In vain conspire From Orizaba's crest of snow. Against thy majesty tempests and fire; The elemental wars of madness born. The Volunteers! the Volunteers! Serene, thou laugh's t to scorn. God send us peace, through all our years ; But if the cloud of war appears, Calm art thou now We'll see them once again. As when the Aztec, on thine awful brow. From broad Ohio's peaceful side, Gazed on some eve like this from Chalco's From where the Maumee pours its tide ; shore. From storm-lashed Erie's wint'ry shore. Where lives his name no more. Shall spring the Volunteers once more. And thou hast seen Glitter in dark defiles, the ominous sheen Of lances, and hast heard the battle-cry Of Castile's chivalry. POPOCATAPETL. And yet again Pale peak, afar Hast seen strange banners steering o'er Gilds thy white pinnacle, a single star, the main, While sharply on the deep blue sky thy When from his eyrie soai-ed to conquest snows forth. In deathlike calm repose. The eagle of the North. The nightingale Yet, at thy feet, Through " Mira Flores " bowers repeats While rolling on, the tides of empire heat. her tale. Thou art, oh mountain, on thy world-piled And every rose its perfumed censer swings throne, With vesper offerings. Of all, unchanged alone. But not for thee, Type of a power Diademed king, this love-born minstrelsy, Supreme, thy solemn silence at this hour