behind! We, indeed, _have seen the sun_, but they--now that his
golden light begins to appear, where are they?"

That is to say, we rejoice, but the mighty dead will never rejoice
more.

And shortly after Balam-Quitzé, Balam-Agab, Mahucutah, and
Iqui-Balam, the hero-leaders of the race, died and were buried.

This battle between the sun and the comet graduated, as I have shown,
into a contest between light and darkness; and, by a natural
transition, this became in time the unending struggle between the
forces of good and the powers of evil--between God and Satan; and the
imagery associated with it has,--strange to say,--continued down into
our own literature.

That great scholar and mighty poet, John Milton, had the legends of
the Greeks and Romans and the unwritten traditions of all peoples in
his mind, when he described, in the sixth book of "Paradise Lost,"
the tremendous conflict between the angels of God and the followers
of the Fallen One, the Apostate, the great serpent, the dragon,
Lucifer, the bright-shining, the star of the morning, coming, like
the comet, from the north.

{p. 247}

Milton did not intend such a comparison; but he could not tell the
story without his over-full mind recurring to the imagery of the
past. Hence we read the following description of the comet; of that--