University of Virginia Library

THE CHURCHYARD.

Night the First.

FIRST GHOST.
O dim unbodied land!
Joy dwells not there, even pain is at a stand.
A smothering presence fills the air around
Of patience dumb, and fears without a sound.

SECOND GHOST.
The Heavenly Watchers where,
That deigned for man to cleave the morning air,
And stooping closed, glad message to fulfil,
Their golden wings on many a glorious hill;
And in earth's green and patriarchal days
With converse joyed our fathers' hearts to raise,
Beneath broad tented trees, blessing their state
With great approval, interdiction great?

FIRST GHOST.
Far other state is ours! No simple grace
Of life primeval, no green dwelling-place!
Sun there, nor moon, nor ether molten blue,
Valley, nor tufted hill divides the view,
Nor lucid river, on whose borders blow
Flowers many-hued, and trees of stature grow:
Nor leafy summer, nor the stormy glee
Of winds, when winter falls upon the sea,
With change delights us: nor returning morn,
Nor face of man relieves that sad sojourn.

SECOND GHOST.
Were men but wise! Did but Ambition know
The flat endurance of our listless wo,
How to his soul would triumph be denied,
How slacked the spasms of his o'ertorturing pride,
Spun from the baffled heart! Oh, how would fail,
Fires of blood and Passions pale!

FIRST GHOST.
Behold the goodly pattern of yon heaven!
Beneath yon moon becalmed the woodlands lie.
By dogs of chase the desert creature driven,
Climbs up the rocky stairs of mountains high;
With sealing light she touches his wild eye,
And all the bliss of slumber is for him.
So sweet yon moon to earth! Sweeter to me
Life fresh of blood would be;
'Twould fill my heart with joy up to the trembling brim.

SECOND GHOST.
What though the churchyard, by the glimmering light,
Pours forth the empty children of the night;
O'er seas and lands we flit, but back are fain
To troop dishonoured to our place again.
Vain privilege! it serves us but to show
The joy that we for ever must forego.

FIRST GHOST.
O the glad earth! no more, ah! never, there
With chaste clear eyes we'll drink the morning air,
Breathed through the sweet green saplings of the spring,
Fresh by the water-courses flourishing!
No more from cooling shades, at noon of day,
We'll watch the crystal waters slide away;
Till come still evening with her drops of dew,
And her large melting moon hung in the southern blue!

SECOND GHOST.
From out the west a haze of thick fine rain
Comes o'er green height, high rock, and smoking plain,
Flies lightly drifted o'er the dimmèd floods,
And shakes its sifted veil upon the woods.
Forth looks the sun, the impearled valley fills
With seeds of light, and sleeks the slippery hills.
Nor yet the showery drops away have ceased
To fall, clear glancing on the darkened east,
When o'er them cast, with saffron horns the Bow
Of Beauty melts the fluid woods below.
With glittering heads, down in the grassy plain
The milk-white herds feed onward in a train;
Sheep nibbling up, goats on the higher slopes,
The shepherds stand upon the mountain-tops.
O beauty! O the glory of the hour!
What living spirit could resist your power?
Not mine; far less it could when rustling through
The crimped translucent cups of leaves, with dew
And sunshine overflown, my love first stood in view.
What tranquil might upon that forehead lies!
How pure the spirit that refines those eyes!
Joy dwelt in her, as light dwells in the stone,
Dear to my heart, but now for ever gone.
God, do but clear her from the grave's foul stains,
Pour back the branching blood along her veins,
Build up that lovely head! Oh let her rise,
Let youth's fine light revive within her eyes!

FIRST GHOST.
Forks of fire, heaven's floodgates pouring,
Crushed and jammed the thunders roaring,
My bride of beauty by my side
Shrinking, we were touched—and died!
What means this death? O God upon Thy throne,
Give us the day; we'll let Thee not alone!
From floods, and fields, and ways, arise, ye ghosts,
Tribes of dusk time! kingdoms! unnumbered hosts!
No more of sufferance! upward let us flee
To God's own gates, and pray the end to be.
Why fear the light? Why fear the morning air?
Fill we His skies with shrieks, and he must hear our prayer.

SECOND GHOST.
Strong is His arm; it o'er that Power prevailed
Who rose with darkness and His Heavens assailed,
And drove him out, far kindling, as he fell,
Around his head the virgin fires of Hell.
His very eye could clear us all away,
Chase us into the grave, and seal us with the clay.
Hush! breathe not of it, lest for aye He change
To blind obstruction this our nightly range.

FIRST GHOST.
Lo! through the churchyard comes a company sweet
Of ghosted infants—who has loosed their feet?
Linked hand in hand, this way they glide along;
But list their softly-modulated song:—

SONG OF THE CHURCHYARD CHILDREN.

[The Children vanish.
FIRST GHOST.
That song, could we but sing it!

SECOND GHOST.
List! Away,
We must not look upon the light of day!
How they shudder down to smoke
At the crowing of the cock,
And the fat absorbing ground
Drinks them up without a sound!

Night the Second.

FIRST GHOST.
Disembodied, we on high
Dwell in still serenity.
Name not faculty nor sense,
Where the soul's one confluence
Of light divine, and love, and praise,
From the Lord's unsealèd ways.
Yet we the waiting dust would don,
With our dear bodies clothed upon;
Loving (for He wears the same)
Jesus through our earthly frame:
Then should we sit at Jesus' feet,
Then our Heaven should be complete.
Therefore, for the body's sake,
Oft its thin semblance do we take,
Quick-fashioned from our Paradise,
Thus to revisit where it lies.
And flitting through the night we're fain
To see our mother earth again.

SECOND GHOST.
O'er the shadowy vales we go,
O'er the eternal hills of snow,
O'er the city, and its cries
Heard from Belial's nightly sties,
And deserts where no dwellers be,
O'er the land and o'er the sea;
Round the dark, and all away,
Touching on the hem of day.

THIRD GHOST.
I had a wife, what earnest-trembling pen
Shall tell her love for me? what words of men?
Spouse of my heart and life! how harsh the pain
To go from thee, and from our children twain!
Unborn unto his sorrowful entail,
The unconscious third could not his loss bewail;
Yet nature reached him when his father died:
Fed on blind pangs within thy widowed side,
And dry convulsive sorrow, bitter food,
He took a deeper stamp of orphanhood,
Than if, life-conscious, he had seen me die,
And wept with many waters of the eye.
This very eve I heard my wife, where she
In saintly calm dwells with our children three;
Their low sweet voices of my name were telling:
Oh how I yearned around their little dwelling!
I could not enter in, I could not make
My presence known, one kiss I could not take!
Yet I rejoice, the Heavenly Watch are keeping
Their nightly vigil o'er the dear ones sleeping.

FOURTH GHOST.
Guard the young lambs, ye Angels; Jesus bids,
Who laid His hand on little children's heads!
From Sin defend them, Thou, O Spirit Good!—
None other can—from Sin still unsubdued,
Plague still permitted! Here wide-glorying Crime
Slays half the kingdoms of man's mortal time;
There Pleasure's form belies the ancient pest,
For whom in sackcloth must the worlds be dressed:
She drugs the earth; then by fierce gleams of haste
The false allurements of her eye displaced,
By scorn, by cruel joy her prey to win,
The hoary shape of disenchanted Sin,
Above the nations bowed beneath her spell,
Seals the pale covenant of Death and Hell.

FIFTH GHOST.
From the dungeon, from the cave,
From the battle, from the wave,
From the scaffold and its shame,
From the rack, and from the flame,
From the lava's molten stone,
Like a river coming on,
From the Samiel hot and swift,
From the earthquake's closing rift,
From the snow-waste's faithless flaws,
From the monster's rending jaws,
From the famished town, possest
By the blue and spotted pest,
From the lazar-house of pain,
From the mad-house and its chain,—
Day and night, day and night
(Could we hear its gathered might),
What a cry, what a cry,
Prayer, and shriek, and groan, and sigh
(Even the dumb have burst to speech,
In strong yearnings to beseech),
Has gone up to Heaven from earth,
Since that curse of Sin had birth!

SEVENTH GHOST.
The glistening infant dies in its first laugh,
Like flower whose fragrance is its epitaph.

SECOND GHOST.
Let the sweet fable tell
Of Aphroditè in her rose-lipped shell,
Fresh from the white foam of the morning sea
Into the birth of beauty; ne'er was she
A lovelier emanation to the sight,
Than earth's young virgin in her dewy light.
But see her now!—a faded drooping thing
(When gleam through sleet the violets of the Spring),
Shuddering and shrinking o'er Death's misty jaws,
They suck her down, the shade of what she was!

THIRD GHOST.
Yon strenuous youth—a soul of thoughtful duty,
Clothed with heroic beauty—
Look how he scales, so high and clear aloof,
The tops of purpose to the sons of proof.
Death strikes the towering mark,
And slings his name for ever down the dark.

FIRST GHOST.
Would the body's death were all
Might the sons of men befall!
But where the spent assault of light
In crystal tremblings dies away
Into the spongy waste of night,
Beyond it I had power to stray:
Far beyond the voice of Thunder,
Through the silent Lands of Wonder,
As they wait the birth of Being,
I was given the power of seeing;
And I saw that baleful place,
For the outcasts of our race.
On the scathed shore, as of a flood
Of fire, a naked creature stood,
Forlorn; and stooping, with his hand
He wrote along the barren sand
Things of remembered earth: His frame
Shook, as he wrote his mother's name.
A noise like coming waves! and lo!
Gleams of a fiery-crested flow!
The molten flood with crowding sway,
Near, nearer, licked those lines away;
Then rising with a sudden roar
(The levelled mist streamed on before),
With horns of flame pushed out, it chased
That being o'er the sandy waste;
Till turning round, with blasphemies
Glaring from out his hollow eyes,
He dared the wrath which, ill defied,
Went o'er him with its whelming tide.
And sights and sounds I cannot name,
Were in that sore possessing flame.
And, ever down from worlds unseen,
(Wrath, wrath beyond what yet hath been!)
Thunderings, and hissings as of rain
Wading through fire, were heard amain.
O place of anguish! place of dread!
Veil the eyes, and bow the head!

SECOND GHOST.
A change comes o'er the night; how gracious soft
This light of upper earth to that sad dwelling!
The firmament is full of white meek clouds,
And in them is the moon; slowly she sails,
Edging each one with amber, as she slides
Behind it, and comes out again in glory.
Darkness falls like a breath, and silent brightness
Touches the earth, alternately: how sweet!

THIRD GHOST.
But who is this her vigil keeping
O'er a grave?

FOURTH GHOST.
The maid is sleeping.
With her old widowed father she
Dwells in her virgin purity,
Young staff of reverence 'neath his weighed years,
Eyes to his dimness, safety to his fears.
And oft when he retires to rest,
She, with her holy thoughts possest,
Comes hither at the shut of day,
To muse beside her mother's clay.
Here once more to muse and weep,
Wearied she hath fallen asleep.

FIFTH GHOST.
Filial piety, how sweet!
Kiss her head, and kiss her feet!

SIXTH GHOST.
May these kisses, dove, infuse
Power to bear the nightly dews!

FOURTH GHOST.
She would fold her arms, and go
To the dark of death below;
Might but a space her mother be
Let up the gladsome day to see.

SIXTH GHOST.
But with eternal sanctity
In that mother's soul and eye,
What to her were all the mirth,
Pomp, and glory of the earth?

SEVENTH GHOST.
Glistening, solemn, sealed from sin,
She to her spouse at eve comes in.
O that meeting! Does she live?
Milk and honey he would give.
A holy joy, but no excess,
Through her pure body passionless
Thrillingly goes, to hear that voice
Which made her wedded days rejoice.
In silence gazing still on him,
Till tears her spiritual eyes bedim,
Sweet murmurs bless him; round she flings
A glance on old remembered things;
Another gaze on him; and then
She's vanished from the world of men.

FIRST GHOST.
Lo! on the maiden's knee the Book of Life!
Kiss every leaf—kiss every wondrous leaf!
The charter of the Paradise we've won,
And Heaven we hope for—kiss each blessed leaf!

SECOND GHOST.
Had we, some eighteen hundred years ago,
Been passing through a certain Eastern village,
We might have seen a fair-haired little boy
Stand at his mother's door, in no rude play
Joining His fellows; grave, but holy sweet
Of countenance. Who's that little boy? The God
Who made the worlds—the very God of Heaven!

THIRD GHOST.
Love to man, and great salvation!
Wondrous, wondrous Incarnation!

FOURTH GHOST.
Ever going to His bed,
At His little feet and head
Looks His mother, laden she
With her burdened mystery;
Still with tears of wonder weeping
O'er the mystic infant sleeping:
He's her son, but He's her Lord!
O the blessed, blessed Word!

FIFTH GHOST.
This Book's His Word, and He Himself's the Word!
This Book is the white horses of Salvation,
The chariot this, and this the Conqueror!
Go forth thou Lion-Lamb, far forward bending!
Strike through dark lands with Thy all-piercing eyes!
See, see the shadows break—tumultuous stir,
Masses, abysses! But among them stand,
Pillars of steadfastness, majestic shapes,
Grisly, the Principalities and Powers
Of outer night, wearing upon their brows
Defiance, and the swarthy bloom of Hell.
Go in among them, Thou, go down upon them,
Queller of all dark things, great Head of Flame!
Them with Thy lightnings and compelling thunders
Smite, bow them backward, sweep them to their place!
Burn with Thy wheels! Trample the darkness down
To melting light, and make it Thy clear kingdom!

SIXTH GHOST.
Worthy is the Lion-Lamb!
Glory to the great I AM!

SEVENTH GHOST.
Sin-spotted youth, world-wearied; difficult age,
Cramped down with stiff-bowed torments; homeless outcasts,
Lying in destitute benumbed caves;
And wanderers reasonless, fantastical,
Gibbering abroad, what time the Moon is hunting
In thin white silence in the shadowy woods;
And stricken creatures in the lazar-house,
Who know no kin, in whom care more than pain
Drinks up the eyes and blood in the night watches,
Or the half draught of suicidal poison
(Remorse and shuddering nature spilt the rest)
Holds its pale quarrel at the heart's red gates;
And they whose hearts are locked up by Despair,
And the key flung into the pit of Hell,—
Even these, all wasted and imperfect natures,
Shall be renewed and finished, and shall walk
Like angels in the white Millennial day,
Day of dead war and of consummate peace:
And that up-going pillared cry of sadness
Shall rise an equal power of praise and gladness.

FIRST GHOST.
This little Book the instrument shall be,
Filled with the Spirit; kiss it reverently!

SECOND GHOST.
And this virgin bless again,
Free from sin and free from pain!

THIRD GHOST.
Her no fabled cestus, wrought
In the magic looms of thought,
Of Gorgon hairs, and coldest gleams
From Dian o'er the morning streams,
And plumes which staid Minerva gave
At midnight from her bird so grave,
Tissued in mystic warp with rays
Plucked from Apollo's head ablaze,
And stings of Wit, whose arrow-tips
In poignant wrath he keenly dips—
A woven dream—encircles round.
A better girdle she has found
In her filial piety,
And that good Book for ever nigh,
In angels, and the Comforter
Whom her dear Lord has sent to her.
Be she where the tempests blow
O'er the North the hail and snow,
Be she where in Southern lands
Hot winds lift the winnowed sands,
Peace with her shall still abide,
The peace that comes from Jesus' side.

FOURTH GHOST.
Child of duty, child of honour,
Thus we breathe our wish upon her:
Bless her to Death's earnest gates,
Leading to the separate states;
Bless her to the Judgment-seat,
Bless her to the Heavens complete!

FIFTH GHOST.
But ha! I smell the breath of day;
Come away, come away.

Night the Third.

FIRST GHOST
(rising from a grave).
Mercy! ah! give me mercy! Give me back
My hours of living days—give me but one!
One crystal minute, then! Oh how I'd fill it
With penitential groans, grappling with God,
Bowed by His covenants to hear and pardon!
'Tis past! And the sore pressure lies on me
Of alienation and expected Judgment.
Plaguing my spiritual vision, dooming me
Still more, the image of One crucified,
Ever before me, hanging in the gloom,
So looks at me, piercing me through and through
With His undying patience—O that look!
Come down, thou Meek-face; 'twas not I that did it!
You cannot say 'twas I! Go to the doers
Of the dread literal act; and let them cry
(As cry they must, when the last heat comes on)
For one drop of the water and the blood
From Thy side-wound, to lie one little moment
Upon their fire-curled, cinder-crusted tongues.—
But ha! from out the Judgment-waiting land,
Here comes a Child of Wrath beyond myself.
Hither, thou guiltier Ghost! Knowest thou me?
Thou lord and master of my youthful crimes,
Behold thy scholar! What! thou shivering thing,
Do thy pale skirts of spongy porous mist
Drink up the glimmerings of the lights of night,
Even like mine own? I should have thought thee kneaded
Of leprous crusts of sin, and blistered marle
Baked with the blood of souls, and scurfy dross
From the purged furnaces of Hell, made clear
To the last spirituality of heat
For master sinners. Look upon me, fiend,
Look on thy handiwork, fashioned by thee
Into a thing for Tophet! Was it good
To make me this? My curse go down with thee
Beyond the soundings of extravagant thought!

SECOND GHOST
(advancing).
The old apology for native vice!
Weak thing! as if thy blindly breathing soul
Within thy mother's womb was not engrained
With all thy colours of eternal years!
Our place is wide enough, let's shun each other.

[The Second Ghost glimmers away.
FIRST GHOST.
He thinks to flee: vain thought! Down he must go!
I too must down! Pitfall, nor den forlorn,
Nor the lone crags of the high-hornèd mountains
Where eagles yelp, jungles, nor sandy lands
Of idle desolation, nor all places
Where the last modesties of nature dwell,
Can hide me from the Power that lets me forth
A little space, to aggravate my doom
By the contrasted sweetness of the earth,
Then draws me back again.—Here are the graves
Of our old house. Would I could gather up
My dust, and take it hence! How shall I bear
The looks of virtuous kindred on that Day,
When summoned I must rise and stand with them,
Even face to face, with all my guilt revealed?
But ha! a new-made grave? Is it my sister's?
Ah! yes, the length and place of it are hers.
My father's and my mother's, long ago
Sunk to the natural level of the earth,
Are hard, and green, and undistinguishable.
But where the spirits of the three? In Bliss,
Let me believe; for I've not known them in
My land of heavy patience. I'm alone
Of all my father's house shut out from Bliss.
Can they be happy when I'm thus shut out?
Oh for the Patriarch's Ladder to come down,
Resting its glory on my mother's dust,
That I might climb the battlements of light,
And be with them for ever!
Help me, my mother, plead for me with Christ!
Stretch down thy dear, dear arms, and take me up;
For I was fashioned in thy holy body;
My father, and my sister, plead for me,
Hang on His wounded side, and plead for me! The Phantom of his Mother passes by.

Salvation! 'Tis my mother! But she's gone!
Would she but come again, I'd burst my bounds,
And follow her unto the shining doors,
And catch her hand, and she would draw me in!
But ah! she did not speak to me, nor look
Back with regret: 'Twas not my mother, then;
But some false head which the Avenging Power
Built up of crystal air and sunny light,
To mock and plague me.
[The Phantom again passes by.
She again? 'Tis she!
I'll follow—oh! oh! oh! Perdition has me!
'Tis but the grinning Fiend! See, how he leers
Back through the blasted night! I know thee, Demon,
Practical Liar in impersonations,
As in thy cozening terms and instigations;
Meanest of all created things! But power
Is given him o'er me, and I must go down.

[The First Ghost vanishes.
The Second Ghost reappears.
SECOND GHOST.
There's no escape! Souls, not yet clothed upon
With semblance, stretching toward the light of life
On the vague shores of Possibility,
Sorrow shall bring you to the birth of blood,
If come you must! Would I had ne'er been born!

[The Second Ghost vanishes.
A strange but short-lived Tempest fills the Churchyard.
THIRD, FOURTH, FIFTH, AND SIXTH GHOSTS.
THIRD GHOST.
What Evil Thing so beats about the night,
With dragon wings of tumult and affright?

FOURTH GHOST.
By yon trail of sulphurous blue,
Demons here have had to do.
In the livid issue, lo!
Pale and dreadful faces go.

FIFTH GHOST.
Wo to the outcasts! Them, nor cunning strings
Melodious, nor soft-stopping pipes, nor all
The sylvan company of sweet-throated birds,
No, nor the very music of the spheres,
Could tune to peace!

A Seventh Ghost comes shuddering near.
SEVENTH GHOST.
I am that outcast thing!
Ye Powers of Mercy, will ye not yet take
Penance from me on earth? Cut ye it out
From the vast quarries of prodigious sorrow,
Shaping it to my soul, and I will do it.
Be it but on the earth, I care not how
Or where I do it; whether groping through
The barren darkness of the Polar hills,
Or glaring shadowless where the inflamed
Dog of the Firmament, fire-fanged, breating fire,
Bays down with his unmitigated jaws
The panting nations: I will do it there!
Far have I wandered, beating round the bars
Of night, to burst into the boundless day,
Unnoticed; ah! it cannot be, the Power
Of Punishment's too strong and subtle for me,
Curbing me back with his invisible hand.
Wo! wo! my hour is come, and I must down!

[The Seventh Ghost melts away down into a grave.
FIFTH GHOST.
Look! look! oh look! They're gone! Saw ye them not?
Round yon flat table of memorial stone
They seemed to sit, a ghostly company
Of hopeless Ones (judging from their sad faces,
Solemnly sad), there with symbolic handling
Of shadowy elements, trying to renew
The Supper of the Lord, as if they might
Call back the day of mercy and of grace,
And still be Christ's. But full upon them came
A blast from the Evil One, to whom was given
Power o'er their lawless and uncertain rite,
A levelled blast, and whirled them clean away,
Like dry dead leaves, sweeping the naked table
Bare of commemoration. O ye sons
Of living men, lay hold of the blue day
Which yet is yours, hold fast the fleeting night
With struggling prayers—hold them, nor let them go
Till you have made your peace with the Almighty!

SIXTH GHOST.
Yon solitary Shade, see how he stands
Aloof—I knew him in the days of earth—
Aloof, alone, and introverted all!
Back, and far back in Memory's inner rooms,
Hung round with haunted glooms, Life's Tragic Sorrows
Act themselves o'er anew, under the eye
Of dread, sole-sitting Conscience.—O that groan!
See how he starts, breaking off all at once
The unfinished trilogies of evolving Guilt,
Shuddering away, self-chased, down into night!

THIRD GHOST.
Let us be humbly thankful, we are safe;
Rejoicing humbly, as the little bird
Flies low and coweringly, and with a half
Chirrup of gladness from the fowler's hand.

FOURTH GHOST.
Praise to our Elder Brother! But for Him,
No earth had been to us, no life, no Heaven!

FIFTH GHOST.
But for His covenanted blood, the Curse
Had killed man's blighted world. The orbs of ether
Spin on the axis of His love. The Bow,
Fashioned of air, and light, and the tears of rain,
Is but the glad reflection of His face,
Graciously pleased. The linnet in the leaves
Christ-chartered sits, while warblings well and bubble
Out from its white-ruffed throat; the dappled fawn
Leaps through the sunny glades, and through the thickets
Bursts, richly powdered with the coloured dust
Of sylvan pith exuberant, and smelling
Of honey-dews, balsams, and dropping gums.
Sleep comes from Him, and peace; the husbandman
Bearing his harvest sheaves, and the blithe shepherd
Piping upon his unmolested hill;
Honey, and wine, and oil; marriage and children;
And all the milky veins of love that run
Branching through nature—all that's fair and good.

SIXTH GHOST.
And for the sake of Jesus, God's own Heavens
Are softly set upon a thousand hinges
Of mercy, ever flexible, ever bowing
Flexible downward to the contrite ones.

THIRD GHOST.
Afflictions come from Him. The awful Finer
Sits by His furnace pot. The heart of man
Is in the pot—the foul, the stony heart.
Lurid from far, but ever coming nearer,
Fiercer and redder, with its threatened flame,
The heat of Hell burns on the furnace pot.
But all-pervading Love goes quicklier through it,
Melting it down dissolved: The dross is purged
Away, below; and in the liquid metal,
Perfect and pure through suffering, the Finer,
Looking therein, sees His own image clear
Reflected: And the holy workmanship
Of every feature, by His art divine,
He fixes there, never to be effaced.

FIFTH GHOST.
Forth stalks the King of Terrors, on his head
The fretted crown of pain; his bony hands
Grasping his sheer cold scythe, down through the field
Of Time he goes, a mower lean and strong,
Mowing his swaths of life. But see, the Babe
Of Bethlehem strikes the crown from off his head,
And breaks his scythe, and casts him into Hell.

SIXTH GHOST.
O for the Spirit's day, when Sin and Death
No more shall hurt the people of the Lord!

THIRD GHOST.
Hasten Thy day of power, refining Spirit,
Making earth's dwellers like the Saints whose feet
Walk on the terrible crystal.

FOURTH GHOST.
Judgment then
Comes unto the sons of men.

FIFTH GHOST.
It should be noon; but where's the sun?
The air is stagnant, silent, dun.
Is it eclipse? Is earthquake near?
Nature listens dumb and drear.
That Trump of Doom!
It rends the gloom.
The eagle falls a ruffled heap,
His pinions drowned in endless sleep:
The affrighted horse, half rearing, sinks;
The dull ox, as he stoops and drinks:
The lion in the wilderness
Has crooked his knees to that stern stress.
The quick are changed: the dead arise.
Lo! the Judge is in the skies.
Rejoice, ye Saints! The Saints rejoice
To hear His bliss-awarding voice:
He blesses them, and they are blest
To go into his Heavenly rest.
Wrath for the Wicked! Doomed and driven,
They sink beneath the Eye of Heaven:
Like hurrying draught of bitter cup,
The Eternal Gulf has drunk them up.

SIXTH GHOST.
Happy, happy we who dwell
In His love unspeakable,
Fearing not that coming Day,
When heaven and earth shall pass away;
For, from the days of everlasting years,
Ere we were fashioned in the Vale of Tears,
The Lamb—the Judge himself—was pledged to be our stay!

THIRD GHOST.
Widening up the eastern skies,
See the pale rim of day arise,
Another day to mortal men,
Toil, and fear, and care again!
Spirit ('tis Thy sacred trust),
Help them, help them, they are dust;
Make them wise, and make them just!
And in great consummation, Dove,
Bring them to our morn above,
Morn of the perpetual day!—
Sister shadows, come away.

The Ghosts vanish.