AVE POST SAECULA
(Greeting after the Ages)
I
When I was a king of Egypt
And Priest of the Sun God Ra,
And you were a peruvian captive
Were brought from your home afar,
In a corner one day in my palace
I caught but a glance from your eyes-
Lonely and alien and wistful-
That filled me with glad surprise.

II
The Dusky Daughters of Kemi
Had mocked your lily-like face;
They were arrogant in their beauty
Till I made them slaves of your grace.
Then together in stately barges
We sailed the Sacred Nile,
And the joy and peace of Aahlu
Were mine through your loving smile.

III
Mummies together in spices,
Fine linen and cloth of gold,
They laid us away in a rock-tomb,
And in hieroglyphics told
Our names and our years and our achievements,
And they worshiped us when dead
Till their generations faded
And new races came in their stead.

IV
Our names and our deeds were forgotten,
And our rock tomb crumbled away,
But the love that made us immortal
Endured through the brighter day;
And we sometimes look earthward
For a glimpse of the river green,
Where I had been king of Egypt
While you were my loyal queen

V
At the court of the Royal Harlot
We lived again by the Nile-
The astrologer Abd-el-Ghizeh
And maid of honor Ajyl.
And although I had forgotten
The days of my royal pride,
By the light in my eyes I knew you
And claimed you again as my bride.

VI
When the haughty Cleopatra
Sailed to meet her Roman Mars,
It was you who held her mirror;
It was i who read their stars.
did we dream of those primitive barges
that had carried us that same way?-
Who shall say!-but at least we remembered
that our love had lived for aye.

VII
And again, that life completed,
We vanished from mortal sight
Only to join each other
In the spirit world of light.
Who can say in what other ages
We meet on earth again,
Or by what celestial stages
We purged ourselves from pain?

VII
Gone all the royal regalia
And the black magicians wands;
Now the royal priest turned peddler
Earns his bread in strange new lands.
Trading from city to city,
He journeys wide and far
Till he finds in a distant corner
A damsel like a star.

IX
Years she toiled in patience,
Lonely and ill at ease,
Feeding her heart with daydreams
That solace but hardly please;
At the touch of his lips she awakens
And the glad light in her face
Tells him once more as he holds her
Fast in his fond embrace.

X
For the deeper knowledge is wakened
Far down 'neath the conscious brain,
And he knows his bride of ages
Has come back to earth again;
And the gate of death holds no terror
Since it cannot separate
The souls that watch for each other
With a love inviolate.

~Laurens Maynard

---