“O my hearts love! O my dear one! lay thy
poor head on my knee; Dost thou know the lips that
kiss thee? Canst thou hear me? canst thou see?
O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal,
look once more On the blessed cross before thee!
Mercy! all is o’er!”
Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down
to rest; Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross
upon his breast; Let his dirge be sung hereafter,
and his funeral masses said; To-day, thou poor bereaved
one, the living ask thy aid.
Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young,
a soldier lay, Torn with shot and pierced with lances,
bleeding slow his life away; But, as tenderly before
him the lorn Ximena knelt, She saw the Northern eagle
shining on his pistol-belt.
With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned
away her head; With a sad and bitter feeling looked
she back upon her dead; But she heard the youth’s
low moaning, and his struggling breath of pain, And
she raised the cooling water to his parching lips
again.
Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand
and faintly smiled; Was that pitying face his mother’s?
did she watch beside her child? All his stranger
words with meaning her woman’s heart supplied;
With her kiss upon his forehead, “Mother!”
murmured he, and died!
“A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led
thee forth, From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping,
lonely, in the North!” Spake the mournful Mexic
woman, as she laid him with her dead, And turned
to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled.
“Look forth once more, Ximena!” Like a
cloud before the wind Rolls the battle down the mountains,
leaving blood and death behind; Ah! they plead in
vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive; “Hide
your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God,
forgive!”
Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool,
gray shadows fall; Dying brothers, fighting demons,
drop thy curtain over all! Through the thickening
winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled, In
its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon’s
lips grew cold.
But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued,
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and
faint and lacking food. Over weak and suffering
brothers, with a tender care they hung, And the dying
foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue.
Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of
ours; Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring
afresh the Eden flowers; From its smoking hell of
battle, Love and Pity send their prayer, And still
thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air! 1847.
