Above, in solemn ’scutcheons hung, Are legends in an unknown tongue— The fingers of the God of light Touched on the awful walls of night.
Through middle breadth, from side to side, The bounding-footed hours glide, And scatter blooms, like meteor things, About a glass with glowing wings.
But I behold an usher wait, And wave me onward to a gate, Whose leaves on groaning staples turn, Within whose arch no lamp will burn.
When, for thy feet, those valves shall play, How soon this grandeur fleets away, How, through a vista vast and clear, These eyes shall look, these ears shall hear,
Preluding my eternity, Deep stops unmouthed in symphony— Hymns of an inexpressive choir, Or tremblings of a winnowed fire.
O Thou, who laidst thy splendors by, To show me how to live and die, Be thou, O Lord, my hope and home, Now, and in ages yet to come.
When, the firm stars and swinging spheres, Conscious of their accomplished years, Flare in the motions of thy mind, As cressets to a midnight wind,
And shrunk of oil, collect their gold, And the great angel, once foretold, Girt with a noonday, comes to stand, One foot on sea, and one on land;
When powers that wear a grand impress, Beatitudes expressionless, Curbed in the glory of a zone, Set forth the white eternal throne;
When the loud trump, with solemn jar, Shall rouse thy creatures to thy bar, Unhousing all the sprites that dwell In realms of heaven and earth and hell;
When, up from where earth’s empire stirs, From all her unchained sepulchres, The trump-alarmed nations run, As vapors flitting to the sun;
When, up from hell’s volcanic gloom, The devils soar to final doom, And shade, in horror and affright, Their eyelids from access of light.
When thou art come to judgment sore, Whom every eye shall see; before Whose eyes the heavens shall crack and roll, Even as a furnace-writhing scroll;
When Thou, alone, dost sit serene, In that immense concurrent scene, Revolving, in thy dome of thought, All that eternal ages wrought.
When Gabriel lays, with solemn look, Beneath thine eye the dooms-day book, And opens where the leaves rehearse The index of the universe;
When the proud rebel’s reckoned score Is big with debts unknown before; When, ’lumined in unshaded day, The good man’s whiteness all is gray;