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 Possesseth mad man without measure? Or shall these early, fragrant hours And with their blush of light descry Thy locks crowned with eternity? That with Thy glory doth best chime; 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, Sweeping, like chaff, thy wealth and pomp away: Still to the noontide 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 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, 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, Lord of all power, when Thou art there alɔne On Thy eternal fiery-wheeled throne, Needs not the perished sun nor mocn: 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! 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. |