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| A DIRGE is wailing from the Gulf of storm-vexed Mexico, | |
| To where through Pampas’ solitudes, the mighty rivers flow; | |
| The dark Sierras hear the sound, and from each mountain rift, | |
| Where Andes and Cordilleras their awful summits lift, | |
| Where Cotopaxi’s fiery eye glares redly upon heaven, | 5 |
| And Chimborazo’s shattered peak the upper sky has riven,— | |
| From mount to mount, from wave to wave, a wild and long lament, | |
| A sob that shakes like her earthquakes the startled continent! | |
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| A light dies out, a life is sped,—the hero’s at whose word | |
| The nations started as from sleep, and girded on the sword, | 10 |
| The victor of a hundred fields where blood was poured like rain, | |
| And Freedom’s loosened avalanche hurled down the hosts of Spain, | |
| The eagle soul on Junin’s slope who showed his shouting men | |
| A grander sight than Balboa saw from wave-washed Darien, | |
| As from the snows with battle red died out the sinking sun, | 15 |
| And broad and vast beneath him lay a world for freedom won. | |
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| How died that victor? In the field with banners o’er him thrown, | |
| With trumpets in his failing ear, by charging squadrons blown, | |
| With scattered foemen flying fast and fearfully before him, | |
| With shouts of triumph swelling round, and brave men bending o’er him? | 20 |
| Not on his fields of victory, nor in his council hall, | |
| The worn and sorrowing leader heard the inevitable call. | |
| Alone he perished in the land he saved from Slavery’s ban, | |
| Maligned and doubted and denied, a broken-hearted man! | |
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| Now let the New World’s banners droop above the fallen chief, | 25 |
| And let the mountaineer’s dark eyes be wet with tears of grief!— | |
| For slander’s sting, for envy’s hiss, for friendship hatred grown, | |
| Can funeral pomp, and tolling bell, and priestly mass atone?— | |
| Better to leave unmourned the dead, than wrong men while they live; | |
| What if the strong man failed or erred, could not his own forgive? | 30 |
| O people freed by him, repent above your hero’s bier: | |
| The sole resource of late remorse is now his tomb to rear! | |
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