The Torture Of Cuauhtemoc Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms	A
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew	B
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor	C
Becking each fevered brain On bleak divides	D
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold	E
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse	F
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains	G
Winged their brief biding dreams but once again	H
Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan	H
They guarded Montezuma's treasure hoard	I
Gold like some finny harvest of the sea	J
Poured out knee deep around the rifted floors	K
Shiny and sparkling arms and crowns and rings	L
Gold sweet to toy with as beloved hair	M
To plunge the lustful crawling fingers down	H
Arms elbow deep and draw them out again	H
And watch the glinting metal trickle off	N
Even as at night some fisherman home bound	O
With speckled cargo in his hollow keel	P
Caught off Campeche or the Isle of Pines	Q
Dips in his paddle lifts it forth again	H
And laughs to see the luminous white drops	R
Fall back in flakes of fire Gold was the dream	S
That cheered that desperate enterprise And now	H
Victory waited on the arms of Spain	H
Fallen was the lovely city by the lake	T
The sunny Venice of the western world	U
There many corpses rotting in the wind	V
Poked up stiff limbs but in the leprous rags	W
No jewel caught the sun no tawny chain	H
Gleamed as the prying halberds raked them o'er	X
Pillage that ran red handed through the streets	Y
Came railing home at evening empty palmed	V
And they on that sad night a twelvemonth gone	H
Who ounce by ounce dear as their own life's blood	V
Retreating cast the cumbrous load away	Z
They when brown foemen lopped the bridges down	H
Who tipped thonged chests into the stream below	A2
And over wealth that might have ransomed kings	L
Passed on to safety cheated guerdonless	L
Found through their fingers the bright booty slipped	V
A city naked of that golden dream	S
Shorn in one moment like a sunset sky	B2
	-
Deep in a chamber that no cheerful ray	Z
Purged of damp air where in unbroken night	V
Black scorpions nested in the sooty beams	L
Helpless and manacled they led him down	H
Cuauhtemotzin and other lords beside	V
All chieftains of the people heroes all	C2
And stripped their feathered robes and bound them there	M
On short stone settles sloping to the head	V
But where the feet projected underneath	D2
Heaped the red coals Their swarthy fronts illumed	V
The bearded Spaniards helmed and haubergeoned	V
Paced up and down beneath the lurid vault	V
Some kneeling fanned the glowing braziers some	E2
Stood at the sufferers' heads and all the while	F2
Hissed in their ears The gold the gold the gold	V
Where have ye hidden it the chested gold	V
Speak and the torments cease	L
	-
They answered not	V
Past those proud lips whose key their sovereign claimed	V
No accent fell to chide or to betray	Z
Only it chanced that bound beside the king	G2
Lay one whom Nature more than other men	H
Framing for delicate and perfumed ease	L
Not yet along the happy ways of Youth	H2
Had weaned from gentle usages so far	I2
To teach that fortitude that warriors feel	P
And glory in the proof He answered not	V
But writhing with intolerable pain	H
Convulsed in every limb and all his face	L
Wrought to distortion with the agony	J
Turned on his lord a look of wild appeal	P
The secret half atremble on his lips	L
Livid and quivering that waited yet	V
For leave for leave to utter it one sign	H
One word one little word to ease his pain	H
	-
As one reclining in the banquet hall	C2
Propped on an elbow garlanded with flowers	L
Saw lust and greed and boisterous revelry	J
Surge round him on the tides of wine but he	J
Staunch in the ethic of an antique school	J2
Stoic or Cynic or of Pyrrho's mind	V
With steady eyes surveyed the unbridled scene	H
Himself impassive silent self contained	V
So sat the Indian prince with brow unblanched	V
Amid the tortured and the torturers	L
He who had seen his hopes made desolate	V
His realm despoiled his early crown deprived him	K2
And watched while Pestilence and Famine piled	V
His stricken people in their reeking doors	L
Whence glassy eyes looked out and lean brown arms	L
Stretched up to greet him in one last farewell	L2
As back and forth he paced along the streets	L
With words of hopeless comfort what was this	L
That one should weaken now He weakened not	V
Whate'er was in his heart he neither dealt	V
In pity nor in scorn but turning round	V
Met that racked visage with his own unmoved	V
Bent on the sufferer his mild calm eyes	L
And while the pangs smote sharper in a voice	L
As who would speak not all in gentleness	L
Nor all disdain said Yes And am I then	H
Upon a bed of roses	L
	-
Stung with shame	M2
Shame bitterer than his anguish to betray	Z
Such cowardice before the man he loved	V
And merit such rebuke the boy grew calm	N2
And stilled his struggling limbs and moaning cries	L
And shook away his tears and strove to smile	F2
And turned his face against the wall and died	V

Alan Seeger

The Torture Of Cuauhtemoc Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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