212 MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 
Other feasts were held in relation to longer time 
periods. There were important festivals held in con- 
nection with the planet Venus with especially elaborate 
ones falling at intervals of eight years. Still another 
ceremony was held at the completion of a fifty-two 
year period, when the set of years were figuratively 
bundled up and laid away and a new sacred fire lighted. 
Poetry and Music. The languages of Central 
America were capable of considerable literary develop- 
ment. This is seen especially in the songs that were 
used in different religious ceremonies of the Aztecs, as 
weil as in the reflective poems written by educated 
natives. Several very fine pieces have been preserved, 
and while there is no rhyme, there is much rhythm. 
When recited by a person speaking fluently the native 
tongue these poems are very impressive. Of course, 
translation is always hazardous, and fundamental 
differences in language, such as exist between English 
and Aztecan, make it almost impossible. The most 
famous poet whose name has come down to us was 
Nezahualcoyotl, or Famishing Coyote, who was a ruler 
of Tezcoco and died at the advanced age of eighty 
years in 1472. <A few verses from one of his poems on 
the mutability of life and the certainty of death have 
been translated as follows :—— 
All the earth is a grave, and naught escapes it; nothing is so perfect 
that it does not fall and disappear. The rivers, brooks, fountaims and 
waters flow on, and never return to their joyous beginnings; they hasten 
on to the vast realms of Tlaloc, and the wider they spread between their 
marges the more rapidly do they mould their own sepulchral urns. That 
which was yesterday is not today; and let not that which is today trust 
to live tomorrow. 
The caverns of earth are filled with pestilential dust which once was 
the bones, the flesh, the bodies of great ones who sate upon thrones, 
deciding causes, ruling assemblies, governing armies, conquering prov- 
inces, possessing treasures, tearing down temples, flattermg themselves 
with pride, majesty, fortune, praise and dominion. These glories have 
passed like the dark smoke thrown out by the fires of Popocatepetl, 
leaving no monuments but the rude skins on which they are written. 
