Come, then, and, added to Thy many crowns, Due to Thy last and most effectual work, Thy word fulfilled, the conquest of a world! William Cowper. AH! what time wilt Thou come? when shall that cry, The "Bridegroom's coming!" fill the sky? Shall it in the evening run When our words and works are done? Or will Thy all-surprising light Break at midnight, When either sleep, or some dark pleasure Or shall these early, fragrant hours And with their blush of light descry Thy locks crowned with eternity? Indeed, it is the only time That with Thy glory doth best chime; All now are stirring, every field Full hymns doth yield; The whole creation shakes off night, The pursy clouds disband and scatter, Oh at what time soever Thou, Grant, I may not like puddle lie Where, if a traveller water crave, In Thy free services engage; And though (while here) of force I must Henry Vaughan. EVEN thus amid thy pride and luxury, When that Great Husbandman shall wave his fan, Shalt thou thy wonted dissolute course maintain. And marriage-feasts begin their jccund strain: 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 The gilded summer palaces, The courtly bowers of love and ease, Go gaze cn 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 docm 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 Needs not the perished sun nor mɔʊn : 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! So shall the Church, Thy bright and mystic Bride, 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! H. H. Milman. |