Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MEXICO The vultures circling Montezuma’s halls Await the victims whom the Despot calls. The blood-stained Aztec altars blaze anew To light the murder of the Patriot few! Mockery of Freedom! They die in vain Who seek to free their country from its chain! Such curse laid Cortez on this luckless land, The blighting menace of the iron hand, Till Eagle and Serpent in fierce embrace Shall end the turmoil of the Toltec race! AVE AVIATOR I Had this vision on a starlit night: Standing alone upon the mountain-top When from the valley where camp-fires blazed An aviator rose, birdlike and graceful, Dropping beneath the cumb'ring clay of earth Until he passed the level of the peak And came into the radiance of the heavens; Then from the cliffs roar’d an outpouring Of shot and shrapnel, glowing in the gloom, In brilliant lighting of the upper air Through which the wing’d warrior moved Like Sindbad’s Roc, replying to the fire. High he flew, higher follow’d the shrapnel Until it found him, darkening his flight. The wreck of plane and engine fell to land, But not the airman, for to him The golden path to glory opened wide, Paved with the tender sheen of moonbeams, Over which he strode, deathless, immortal, i Into the company of all the heroes! THE FALKLAND FIGHT Gone are the ways of the well-fought ship, An’d of pike and cutlass free, Where the muzzles meet in the fighting fleet Broadside on the rolling sea! Yard-arm and yard-arm no more interlock In the grip of the ocean fray, For the sea dogs bark at their distant mark Two leagues and a half away! No glory here in the long-range reach? No Blake’s or Nelson’s fame? But screeching yells of the lyddite shells And death in their yellow flame! WAR AND LIFE We take no heed as we tramp the fields Of the…