XI.

HEAVEN.

CLXX.

EVEN thus amid thy pride and luxury,
O earth! shall that last coming burst on thee,
That secret coming of the Son of man;
When all the cherub-throning clouds shall shine,
Irradiate with his bright advancing sign;

When that Great Husbandman shall wave his fan, Sweeping, like chaff, thy wealth and pomp away: Still to the noon-tide of that nightless day,

Shalt thou thy wonted dissolute course maintain.
Along the busy mart and crowded street,
The buyer and the seller still shall meet,
And marriage feasts begin their jocund strain :
Still to the pouring out the cup of woe;

Till earth, a drunkard, reeling to and fro,
And mountains molten by his burning feet,

And heaven, his presence own, all red with furnace heat.

The hundred-gated cities then,

The towers and temples, named of men

Eternal, and the thrones of kings;

The gilded summer palaces,

The courtly bowers of love and ease,
Where still the bird of pleasure sings;
Ask ye the destiny of them?

Go gaze on fallen Jerusalem!

Yea, mightier names are in the fatal roll,

'Gainst earth and heaven God's standard is unfurled, The skies are shrivelled like a burning scroll,

And the vast common doom ensepulchres the world.
Oh! who shall then survive?

Oh! who shall stand and live?
When all that hath been is no more:
When for the round earth hung in air,
With all its constellations fair,

In the sky's azure canopy:

When for the breathing earth, and sparkling sea,
Is but a fiery deluge without shore,
Heaving along the abyss profound and dark,
A fiery deluge, and without an ark.

Lord of all power, when thou art there alone
On thy eternal fiery-wheeled throne,

That in its high meridian noon

Needs not the perished sun nor moon: When thou art there in thy presiding state, Wide-sceptred monarch o'er the realm of doom: When from the sea depths, from earth's darkest womb, The dead of all the ages round Thee wait:

And when the tribes of wickedness are strewn Like forest leaves in the autumn of thine ire: Faithful and true! thou still wilt save thine own: The saints shall dwell within th'unharming fire, Each white robe spotless, blooming every palm.

Even safe as we, by this still fountain's side, So shall the church, thy bright and mystic bride, Sit on the stormy gulf a halcyon bird of calm. Yes, mid yon angry and destroying signs, O'er us the rainbow of thy mercy shines, We hail, we bless the covenant of its beam, Almighty to avenge, almightiest to redeem !

CLXXI.

THOU God of glorious Majesty,
To Thee, against myself, to Thee,
A worm of earth, I cry;

A half-awaken'd child of man;
An heir of endless bliss or pain;
A sinner born to die!

Lo! on a narrow neck of land,
"Twixt two unbounded seas, I stand,
Secure! insensible !

A point of time, a moment's space,
Removes me to that heavenly place,
Or shuts me up in hell.