IV
Blessed is the martyr’s crown
And valiant were they who wore
In Francis’ name the corded gown
And to the heathen bore
The Cross of Christus crucified,
With thorn-pressed brow and piercéd side
And body wounded sore:
Like valiant soldiers they did come
To preach their Gospel mild
And find them sweetest martyrdom
Within an heathen wild——
St. Francis’ men, who turned to kiss
The Crucifix, and met their bliss,
And on their murderers smiled.
Bruit had come to the Pecos folk
Of warrior-men from Heaven,
Who strid strange beasts and in thunders spoke
And armed them with red levin——
Who bannered their hosts with new gods and dread
And shook the land with a terrible tread
Where they searched for the Cities Seven:
And the Priests and the Elders wafted high
The smoke of their questioning prayer,
And they asked of Earth and they asked of the Sky
And they asked of the Lords of the Air——
And the signs breathed peace, and they were content,
And unto the strangers their captains they sent
With gifts and with covenants fair.
For why should they fear the stranger’s face
When the Powers whom their sires had known
Had boded them well from the Sacred Place
With its ancient divining stone?
Why should men fear who through perilous past
By their strong gods warded were mighty at last
Into a nation grown?
So with flute and with drum and with gala cheer
Forth they thronged them to greet
The steeled and glittering Cavalier
And the Friar with way-worn feet——
And the men of Spain found pleasant rest,
And the ovens glowed, and each grateful guest
Warm-scented the odors sweet:
Oh, the men of Spain in Pecos town
Were welcomed with joyous array,
Whose folk little dreamed as the dusk closed down
That their Sun had ended that day——
That an Age of the Red Man’s World was past,
And down from their altars his gods were cast
To silently vanish away!
Oh, who could the bitterness and the blood
Of their lurid morrow know?
Where the aged shaman sat grim with his brood
Of the Spirits of long ago,
And the lonely friar with his lifted sign
Stood watching the riders in drifting line
Pass out to the morning glow:
And who should rue his martyr’s crown
To the valiant soul who wore
In Francis’ name the corded gown
And to the heathen bore
The Cross of Christus crucified,
With thorn-pressed brow and piercéd side
And body wounded sore?
In after years they came again
In corded robe and cowl,
The army of St. Francis’ men,
With book and adz and trowel——
And they builded their church and their masses said,
And they pastored the living and prayed for the dead,
And succored them many a soul:
And the folk of the ancient citadel
To Christian rites were born,
And they harkened to a Christian bell,
And they prayed to Christ each morn——
And sometimes in the fading day
Their olden altars, in decay,
With plumes they did adorn.