University of Virginia Library

Ezekiel, in the valley, when the bones
Of a great army moved, with life endowed,
While reconstructed skeletons arose,
Wearing the raiment of the flesh again,
Felt not a deeper awe than chills my heart
While looking on this picture.

Ye, who heed
No warning in the spoken word, draw near,
And tremble in the presence of your Judge,
Who sits enthroned upon the Holy Hill!
Dim is the lustre of midsummer noon
Compared with radiance streaming from his crown.
His calm, unalterable gaze is fixed
Upon a sea of tossing heads below,
And trumps are blown, and angels on the wing:
Green graves are opening, and their tenants throng,
Aroused from heavy slumber, to their doom.
Pale ashes of men martyred for the truth,
Scattered by wildly-wafting winds abroad
In other ages, gather and take form;
And dusty particles, dissevered long,
Meeting—to change and be disjoined no more,—
Attract to its old home the wandering soul.

From sandy wastes, dark woods and polar fields—
The gorges of gray mountains, and deep caves
That open their grim portals in the sea,
To Judgment march the tribes of humankind,
From Adam to the last-born of his line.
A summons, piercing Earth's old heart, is heard;
Wearing the signet faith can give alone,
In pity turn the faces of the just
On Sin and black Despair, whose looks denote
Unutterable agony and woe.
Regardless of the gold beneath his feet,
The miser lifts a supplicating glance;
Tearing a blood-stained garland from his brow,
With frantic gesture lost Ambition prays;
The ties of nature, rudely broken, wake
Wailing more loud than ocean's wildest roar—
The separating Angel, in mid air,
To right and left extends his beck'ning arms.
The guilty mother to her spotless babe,
Decked for the bowers of bliss in robe of light,
Clings with fierce grasp in vain—and from the side
Of his tyrannic master bounds the slave,
To bear his palm-branch to the gates of heaven.
The poor man, who, with God and virtue, walked
Upon a thorny pathway to his grave,
Is greeted with glad welcome by the saints:
No more will Pomp—a trembling beggar now—
Treat him with cold disdain, or hear unmoved
His tale of wrong. The children of his love,
Starved! when a fellow-worm, in tinsel clad,
Trampled on law, both human and divine,
To rob him of his right to toil for bread:
But, lo! the scattered household round their sire
Flock after parting long, and seem to say:—
“Rejoice, dear father! we will feel the pangs
Of hunger, thirst, and pinching cold no more.”