Queen Moo's Talisman: The Fall of the Maya Empire

								

Am I! the drouth of this, my land, allay.
Send down thy light, Great Sun!” he cried aloud,
“Let me forget! with mortal form endowed.”


To her he turned again:—“Forgive! forgive!
Earth-born thro’ thee, ah! let me once more live.
My crimes and victories, my soul’s defeat,
My anguish and remorse, wilt thou repeat;
For thus alone new life may dawn for me—
In solitude I’ve long awaited thee.”


A falling tear the sighing dreamer woke:
No mem’ry of the past could she evoke.
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III.

  Again the Talisman, now set in gold,
Was worn by woman as in days of old.
She asked herself, “Doth mystery lurk herein?
Can we from this some hidden knowledge win?
Perhaps for us there is a task to do,
Of bygone times some link to find anew.
Cold stone! if dowered thou by magic deep,
What then—if silence thou must ever keep?
Jadeite grey-green, by ancients called divine,
Till Earth grow cold this talisman may shine;
As it hath seen long eons in the past,
So may it yet man’s memory outlast.”


’Twas thus the dreamer meditating thought,
Till by her strong desire some rays were caught.


A mystic clue this stone of magic, yea,
To scenes of long ago—but find the way.
Like other million forms, stone hath a soul,
A spark divine of God the Perfect Whole.
Then heard the woman toying with the stone:
“With power was this endowed for thee alone.”


What voice thus spake from mind to mind? No sound
The silence broke, wherein her thought was bound.


“’Tis I, among Earth’s men thy friend of old;
In times long past this page I thee foretold;
For thou hast been in this, his present life,
His sister one brief year; thou art his wife.
Attachments deep and strong are ties that bind;
We ever take the skein again to wind
Ourselves about with bonds that draw us back,
And which none other than ourselves can slack.
He came to give the ancient Maya race
Its right—on history’s page a noble place.
He would to light restore what’s hid away,
And throw upon the past a clearer ray.”


“When we outgrow desire for mundane things—
Which are but means—our spirit finds its wings.
When universal love and light are all
We crave, no power of earth can us inthrall.
Peace comes alone through matter, which is strife;
Right effort lifts the soul to purer life.


To do his best is all man knows of right—
Observing this, he finds the spirit’s might.
To dread the Great Unknown is bondage vile
For man; this fear’s a sin that doth defile
The thought and deed of multitudes. In space
No depth is found where evil can efface
Love’s holy, constant, all-pervading ray;
Go where soul will, it need feel no dismay.
Peace dwells in Heart of Heaven, eternal Ku;